


Alice

by AllRose



Category: Gilmore Girls
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-20
Updated: 2016-11-20
Packaged: 2018-09-01 02:59:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 21,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8604502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllRose/pseuds/AllRose
Summary: Alice Gilmore-Huntzburger's bookshelf had always played host to a collection of books by Jess Mariano. [Completed. Originally posted to ffnet 2010-2011]





	1. Prologue

Alice Gilmore-Huntzburger's bookshelf had always played host to a collection of books by Jess Mariano. It wasn't something she had ever questioned, mostly because they were too high up for her to notice most of the time. But they were constant features in her house, and she remembers being surprised that they weren't in her friends' houses, beside _Crime and Punishment_ and _The DaVinci Code_. They were just _there_ , and they had moved with them from her parents house after the divorce to the temporary hiatus they spent in with her grandparents in Stars Hollow, and then to their own little house.

Alice's own personal discovery came at the tender age of eleven. Her mother had taken her copy of _Pride and Prejudice_ from her in punishment for breaking curfew, and she had placed it on the very top shelf of their floor-to-ceiling bookshelf. Alice had undertaken her mission as if it were her own Everest. After some elaborately-drawn blueprints, a Tarzan-like swing off a curtain, and a Mission-Impossible job (both of which ended in a small eleven year old suspended immobile in the air until her grandfather cut her down), she had resorted to scaling the shelves. The resulting chaos had led to the _entire_ shelf falling down, and a sprained wrist. However, she had managed to grab one book before her sharp descent to the ground. _Freefall,_ by Jess Mariano. Never one to dismiss irony when it had so clearly smacked her in the face (or rather, wrist), she settled for this book instead of Mr. Darcy.

By the time she got the opportunity to read _Pride and Prejudice_ it had been ruined for her anyway. Her grandfather Luke, upon being forced one night to watch the five-hour BBC series, and rewatch the scene when Colin Firth comes out of the water six times, had thrown up his hands and exclaimed, "She only wanted him for his house, anyway!" and then had proceeded to explain every way in which this was true. Lane Kim had been reduced to tears, and no women in Stars Hollow had visited Luke's Diner for a week, prompting Lorelai to nickname the diner 'Sausagefest'. She had refused point-blank to explain why to her children and grandchildren, but her homemade sign had induced snickering from most of the town's population until the ancient Taylor Doose had taken down because of its "slanderous and corruptive nature," and accused Lorelai of being worse than Luke's nephew for corrupting the town.

In any case, _Freefall_ was an acceptable substitute. She read it quickly and proceeded to devour the rest of his collection. Her mother had every single book he had ever written, except for his incredibly rare first novel, _The Subsect_ , which cost a fortune on eBay and was probably the only first edition her great-grandfather hadn't left to her in his will.

* * *

The unfolding of the truth that kick-started this story came about completely coincidentally. A few choice words by Liz two conversations apart, one about her son and another about Jimmy Mariano. A throwaway remark of the occupation of Doula's brother sealed the deal.

Jess Mariano was her step-grandfather's nephew. Which made him her...step first cousin once removed? Second cousin? She felt deceived and excluded. But mostly she was curious. _Really_ curious.

And look where it had led her. Here she stood, loitering outside a dark house in Hartford, as the dusk settled. It was drizzling lightly, and she was shivering without her coat. It was an impulse decision, coming here, and she tried to come to terms with the fact that she had no idea what she was doing.

It had started with Liz's revelation. She had clamped her hand over her mouth in horror and begged Alice not to tell her mother.

Of course, she had to know more. She had pestered Doula incessantly about her brother, but Doula was a senior now and had no time for her young cousin's pestering. She had told her only one piece of useful information: Jess lived in Hartford, and hadn't attended a family celebration since she was small because of some family dispute. Oh, man. Like she wasn't curious enough, now there was a family scandal?

The proverbial straw: The project her teacher had assigned them this morning. Worth 80% of her final grade. My Favourite Author. She needed this A. Ivy Leagues liked A's.

It was fate.

So, after she had Googled his address using the library at Chilton's ancient computers (oh yeah, Nancy Drew had nothing on Alice Gilmore), she had sneaked away after school and come here.

It had all happened very fast, and very rushed, and now that she is here she has no idea what she is supposed to do or say.

Some kids pass her on the sidewalk. They drop their voices as they pass the house, glancing quickly at the imposing black gates and rushing past. It is all very Gothic-novelesque. She looks for bats, but finds none.

She shivers, but she isn't sure if she is cold or nervous.

The gates turn out to be open, so she runs to the safety of the dry porch. Her fingers tremble a little as she rings door bell. The sound seems to drag on forever as she waits. Finally, the door swings open, and there is Jess Mariano.

"Huh."


	2. One: I Never Talk to Strangers

Her first impression is that he doesn't look anything like Liz. He mostly looks like the thirty-nine year old man he is, and a tiny bit like Luke. That might have been due to the expression gracing his features, which clearly said _you just woke me up from a nap and that bothers me_.

"I'm not buying any cookies," he tells her. His voice is raspy and a little bored.

Yep, she woke him up.

"Huh? I'm...I-I'm not," she stammers, blushes deeply and proceeds to stare at her feet. He raises his eyebrows and rests against the door frame. He crosses his arms and leans in conspiratorially towards her. "If you're looking for the clinic, it's on the parallel street to this," he signals with his head. "You wouldn't be the first to get lost."

She gapes at him.

Screw it.

"No! I'm your cousin."

His eyebrows shoot up to the sky.

"That so?"

"Yeah," she admits nervously. "Not by blood. I'm not sure what kind of cousin. Our family's way too dysfunctional for all that once-removed stuff to figure out. Not that you're dysfunctional or anything! Just, there are a lot of step-parents going on and Doula and Gary just call me their cousin. So do Will and Audrey even though they're technically my aunt and uncle. Not that they ever let me forget that, because they don't, but they usually refer to me as a cousin to make life simple and to placate the parents and-"

"Okay, okay, I get the picture!" He straightens a little. "Cousins. I presume by the excessive use of words you're Gilmore?"

She nods and shifts a little from side to side.

"You're soaked," he remarks.

"It's raining." _Stupid_ , she berates herself in her head.

"Huh. Who'd have thought? Come on then." He disappears into the dark head. Unsure of how to proceed, she loiters at the threshold of the house.

The house is dark and a little gloomy, but not totally unwelcoming. Clearly the Gothic theme was in her imagination. She is a little disappointed. There are books everywhere. On tables and under tables. Piled on chairs and stacked under chairs. In shelves and on top of shelves. On the stairs and under the stairs.

Seuss would have gone wild with delight.

She lingers in the hallway for a moment before he reappears with a towel which she gratefully but nervously accepts. She begins wringing her hair while following him to the kitchen. He makes her a coffee, without asking her. Oh yeah, he definitely knows her family.

"Which Lorelai?" He asks suddenly

"Rory."

She can't see his reaction; his back is to her.

"She doesn't know you're here." It is not a question.

"No," she admits. "I skipped school. She doesn't know that I know who you are. Liz told me not to tell her. But I had to come see you because...well I've read all your books and I'm a huge fan and my teacher wants me to do a project about a writer...and once Liz let slip who you are-" Here he snorts dismissively. "I was just curious..." she trails off and realises they are now in a poky living room. They sit.

He stares at her for a long moment, and she doesn't quite know where to look. Has he heard a word she has said? A long, pregnant pause follows in which she stares engrossed into her coffee. She takes a sip and feels some warmth return to her, even though she is still shivering mildly. She shifts a little under his scrutiny.

"You look like her," he says finally. "Your mother."

"Everyone says that. But my hair is like grandma's and I have my dad's brown eyes."

"Your dad is..."

"Logan Huntzberger." She dislikes telling people who her father is; they tend to judge her for it. He nods slowly and meets her eyes.

Another pause.

"What age are you?"

"Fifteen."

"Huh. You look younger."

She doesn't know how to respond to that.

"How did you get here?"

"I skipped final period. I can get a later bus home."

He groans, "No-one knows you're here?"

"Um...no?"

"And they're expecting you?"

"Well Mom's working. But I suppose Luke will notice if I don't go for coffee after school. And Will and Audrey will notice I'm not on the bus. I don't have my cell phone; I must have forgotten it this morning." Suddenly she feels very stupid.

"Jeez," he mutters and before she has time to protest he has found the phone and dialled.

"Lorelai? It's Jess. Jess Mariano, how many Jess's do you know? Non-fictional... No, Male! Lorelai? Calm down. No, because...No. Because she's here! Yes. No. I don't know she just arrived at my door. I tried to but you kept interrupting me talking about Jessica Fletcher. Yeah, yeah. Same house, yeah. Okay." He hung up and sighed heavily. "Lorelai's on her way."

"I'm in big trouble," she said guiltily.

He looked deeply uncomfortable. "Sorry to rat you out, but I know how Stars Hollow overprotects their princesses." He really does look sorry.

"This was a bad idea," she says softly. "I'm sorry. You're probably busy."

She's horrified to realise her voice is choked up.

Apparently so is he.

"Ah jeez, alright. Conduct your interview. You're destroying my Salinger-style reclusive rep, but go ahead."

She sniffles. "I don't have any questions prepared. Dammit, impulsiveness is not my friend!"

He chuckles. "You sound like your Mom." He sobers for a moment. "You've really read all my books?"

She nods. "Yeah, my mom has them all except for _The Subsect_ , obviously. It's impossible to find."

"All of them except _The Subsect_ ," he repeats hollowly.

"It's a collector's item," she informs him, because he doesn't seem to know.

He smiles a little. "We only a printed a few. I had to haul my ass all over the eastern seaboard to get bookshops to stock it. Sweet justice."

"Who's your inspiration?"

She pulls a pen and paper out of her bag, determined to get something from this.

"God, I've no idea," he sighs. "A combination of a lot of people, I guess. Hemingway, Salinger, Kerouac, Bukowski...everyone I guess. Beats, mostly. But I couldn't tell you how they influenced me directly, though."

She nods emphatically.

"Your writing is so unique," she gushes. "I can't think of anyone who I could compare you to."

He smiles a little sadly.

"Yeah, I've been told that before."

She searches for another question. "Um... when did you start writing?"

"When I was eighteen." Luke had kicked me out of Stars Hollow and I was on the road, homeless, a little hopeless. It just...burst out of me." It seems to make him a little sad, so she moves on, although she stores the gem in her head that he lived in Stars Hollow for later.

"Like Bukowski?" She tries to remember, but comes up with only fragments:

_unless it comes out of_ _  
_ _your soul like a rocket,_ _  
_ _unless being still would_ _  
_ _drive you to madness or_ _  
_ _suicide or murder,_ _  
_ _don't do it._

"Like Bukowski." He seems a little impressed. She smiles, validated and a little proud.

"How often do you spend writing?"

"A lot. I don't run Truncheon anymore, that's the publishing house I worked at in Philly. They wanted me to get my books out faster. So recently I've been trying to do it full-time. We opened a store in Hartford and I moved here to help set that up, but I don't have much to do with the day-to-day running anymore."

"So you're working on something new? When's it coming out? What's it about?" She could probably be hired to be his personal cheerleader.

"It's nothing yet, just a bunch of ideas in my head. But it'll probably be a collection of short stories."

A car's headlights beam through the window and Alice knows it's her grandmother. She only now realises how dark it is. He tells her to wait a minute and returns with a battered little book.

"It's a little ruined. I have new ones in a box somewhere, I'll see if I can find you one."

She holds it like the precious item it is and flips through the pages. The book is filled with tiny, precise handwriting. Half the chapters are crosses out with light pencil. Light enough to still read the text, but enough to show he wasn't keen on that particular section.

"Part of the editing process," he jokes. "I hate that book... I write in the margins a lot," he says by way of clarification.

"I do, too," she enthuses. "It's perfect. I love books with character."

"I bet your mother loves that." He smiles at her and she realises he has a crooked, almost lopsided smile.

"She's used to it by now. Thanks."

"It's cool," he waves it off. "Just don't tell your mother."

"Why?"

They are interrupted by Lorelai's frantic ringing of the doorbell. Jess opens the door for her and she storms in. A cape should have swished behind her. Ominous music should have been playing. Alice could imagine Wagner writing for this type of situation.

"Where is she? ALICE LORELAI GILMORE! You are in soo much trouble, missy! I have a cell waiting on Robben Island with your name on it!"

Alice responds by staring at her feet and scuffing them against the floor.

"If your mother ever found out! What were you thinking? Skipping school, leaving your cell phone at home. I was worried sick! I called your school! I attacked the bus driver! How could you be so irresponsible?"

Alice's cheeks suddenly feel very hot and wet.

"Lorelai," Jess interjects. "Come on, she's alright. Nobody was hurt."

Lorelai ignores him, but her tone softens. "You have no idea what was going through my head."

"I'm sorry."

She sighs. "Just go and get your stuff."

She runs to the living room to get her backpack and the towel. When she returns, the adults are arguing.

"Come on, Jess."

"No!"

"It's just Thanksgiving."

"I'll pass."

"Luke's cooking! Sookie will inevitably send dessert. I'm going to make turkey hands with the kids, even though they're too old and they'll grumble the whole time. April's flying in from Boston. Kirk and boy Kirk are re-enacting the First Thanksgiving! By themselves! There's going to be multiple costume changes."

He makes a different dismissive gesture at each sentence. His creativity is a little impressive.

"Come," Alice pipes up.

The two adult's heads swivel toward her.

"Listen to the little delinquent. You can teach her your school avoiding skills. Impart some Mariano wisdom."

"You're hilarious," he informs her, dryly. "Will it be hard for your children when you go away to do Last Comic Standing?"

"Come on, Jess! Luke told me not to leave without a promise that you'd come!"

He sighs. Looks at Alice. She gives him her best Gilmore pouty eyes.

"'Atta girl," Lorelai cheers.

He points at Alice, "Put them away."

"Only if you come for Thanksgiving. We can finish my interview. Please."

He sighs deeply. "Maybe."

"That's enough for me! Come on, kid!" She grabs her granddaughter and runs out the door before he has time to change his mind.

He shouts, "That's probably a no!" as they are leaving the driveway.

"I can't hear you!"

"Lorelai!"

* * *

After a monumental telling off from her grandmother in the car on the way home, Alice got some of the information she craved. Jess and her mother had fallen out before she was born, Lorelai said. Everybody had been busy at the time, with her pregnancy with Audrey and the wedding. Nobody knew why, and nobody asked. That was that.

And for God's sake, don't ever tell your mother I told you this.

* * *

Three days later, spontaneously and of his own accord, Luke decided to fill her in a little more.

"I think he was always a little in love with her," he remarked as he fixed the TV and she sat on the sofa reading _The Subsect_. Everybody else was out doing God knows what, but Alice was bored and she wanted to relax. She wasn't as close with her cousins and other relatives as her mother would have liked. It wasn't that they disliked each other, but there was a couple of years between her and the next youngest, Audrey, and it seemed to become more obvious as time passed. Although she had some friends at school, she always seemed to be the loner in the Gilmore-Danes clan, preferring to read than to shop with Audrey and Doula and play sports with Will and Gary.

It wasn't a problem to Alice, anyway; she was happy on her own with a good book. The sun was streaming through the room, illuminating every dust particle in the air. She revelled in the peaceful setting. Luke tilted her head in the direction of the book and gave her a meaningful look. "Your mom and dad were having problems at the time. They were breaking up one minute and making up the next. It looked for a little while like her and Jess were finally going to...have their moment, I guess. At least, it did to me. But then your mom found out she was pregnant with you and went back to your dad."

She let this information sink in.

"I wish she hadn't gone back to him," she said softly.

"Hey, now." Luke had his ' fathers united ' face on. "Your father loves you. He's just not very good at showing it. Plus, he's not around much to show you. But he makes sure you and your mother never want for anything and he never forgets your birthday. Remember how jealous Audrey and Doula were last year when he sent you that Gecko coat from Paris?"

"It's Gucci, grandpa," she groaned and rolled her eyes. "And I would have preferred a hug." Suddenly she did not want to be having this conversation at all.

"You can't choose your parents, kiddo." Luke patted her head tenderly as he left the room.

She shrugged, sighed heartily, and went back to her book.


	3. Two: Fumblin' With the Blues

In the end, he came for Thanksgiving.

It caused quite a stir in the Gilmore-Danes household. Between Doula and Liz hanging off him and Lorelai and Luke's attempts to make him less uncomfortable, Alice had no chance to talk to Jess. Lorelai took exquisite pleasure in introducing Alice to him in front of her mother, which he seemed to find both boring and a complete waste of energy. He raised an irritated eyebrow at her, prompting Lorelai to not-so-subtly nudge him in the stomach. It didn't matter anyway; her mother was far too busy making awkward and prolonged eye-contact with him to notice anything amiss.

After dinner, she sees him slip out the back door and figures she has her chance. This time she is well prepared. At least ten pages of questions (front and back) are stored in the front pocket of her cardigan. They are filled with what is, in her humble opinion (though nobody else's) the makings of the greatest interview of all time. She is going to be like that kid in _Almost Famous_ , writing for _Rolling Stone_ magazine and generally being a wonderkind.

She makes her way out onto the porch but freezes mid-step when her mother's voice filters through.

What would Nancy Drew do? Why, hide behind the door of course!

She has missed the beginning of the conversation, but she isn't particularly worried. If it was anything like the middle now was, it consisted almost entirely of uncomfortable silences. Her mother recounts her move back to Stars Hollow. He mentions Liz. More silence. Finally, with a voice so low she has to strain to hear him, Jess speaks.

"You know, I've been doing some counting. Some, uh, basic addition."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, see it's been about fifteen, sixteen years since I last saw you, right?"

"Jess..."

"Bear with me, here. Which was it, sixteen years?"

"About that, yes."

"Specifically, fifteen years and ten...eleven months?"

Her mother says nothing.

He laughs, but there is no humour in his voice. "And that kid you've got there, when did she turn fifteen?"

"Jess." There is an edge to her voice. A warning.

"Hey," he holds his hands up. Rory doesn't see them; they aren't even looking at each other.

"What do you want me to say, Jess?"

He crosses the space between them suddenly and grabs her shoulder.

"What's going on?" Lorelai appears behind her.

"Shhh," she motions and points.

"Ooh, eavesdropping! You're becoming quite the sleuth aren't you?"

Alice glares at her and points again fervently.

"Ok, shutting up now!" They turn to face the pair, whose argument has progressed.

"I have a right to know!" He is angry now, and her mother isn't looking too chipper either.

"I don't know!" she half-shouts. "God, I could never even entertain the possibility of that!"

"Rory, if she is my daughter, I have a right to know!"

Lorelai gasps loudly behind her.

The world suddenly speeds towards her with the swiftness and strength of a train, or a jumbo jet, or something else fast and heavy and completely discombobulating. It collides right into her chest to wind her. She literally cannot breathe.

_What?_

The question just rolls around her head like one of those tiny metal pinballs. Every other articulate thought is gone right out of her head.

Of course, Lorelai's gasp gives them away. Alice is suddenly aware that everyone has turned to look at her. Her mother has her hand to her mouth.

"Alice..." she pleads, but seems unsure of what else to say. The sound jerks her into action. She rips herself from Lorelai's loose grasp and tears away from the scene. Her only coherent thought is that she must be alone.

Nobody follows her.

* * *

She finally comes to somewhere around Stars Hollow High. Skidding to a halt, she bends over and desperately attempts to catch her breath. It doesn't really work; she feels like her lungs have shrunk and her gasping breaths burn and sting to the point where she begins to panic. It takes her several minutes to control herself. She's never had a panic attack before and she has no idea what to do about it. There are no brown paper bags in the immediate vicinity, and according to Hollywood that is supposed to be the only cure.

She really cannot process a single thought at this point. Perhaps it is simply the shock, or perhaps it is her body's defensive system protecting her, but she simply cannot collect her thoughts. She wonders vaguely if hyperventilation has led to a deprivation of oxygen to her brain, but quickly dismisses the thought, because surely the ability to wonder this means her brain is perfectly alright? Surely the act of thinking about thinking meant she is able to think? She resigns herself to the fact that she is more likely trying to distract herself from her immediate problems. Which were...?

Oh yes, her cousin was possibly her biological father.

Jesus.

Sure, she and her father had never been as close as herself and her mother, but he was still her dad! Luke was right, you couldn't choose your father, and she resented the idea that now she was being given a choice. Her poor father, what would he say? He would probably call a lawyer; make a big deal about the press and scandals and that. If he was upset, he would never show it.

And Jess, he was cool. But he wasn't her dad. Could he ever be? He was almost a complete stranger. He was as oblivious as she was this entire time, so she could never blame him for not being there for her, but still it wasn't fair! And her mother! How could she? There was no way she could have just closed her eyes and ignored the fact that her husband might not have been the father of her child. What a bitch! She wipes sweat and tears from her eyes and sits down, suddenly exhausted. Could she even imagine Jess as her father anyway? She could admit she hadn't much to compare it to: a Rolex, some designer clothes, a perfunctory fortnightly phone call, awkward Christmases. But her dad was her dad, goddammit!

* * *

The sound of heels clicking against wood informed her of her mother's arrival.

She didn't bother looking up at her, but she felt the wood creak a little as Rory sat down beside her.

She didn't say anything for a long time.

Finally, her explanation:

"I was with your dad a long time. When I graduated college, he proposed, but I didn't feel I was ready. So I said no and he took it as the end of our relationship. After that, he went to San Francisco and I followed Obama's presidential campaign for a couple of years. Honestly Alice, it was great experience but it was long and lonely. I was...scared to be out on my own. So Logan and I started talking again, more and more. We...I slept with him. Then there was this weird...transition period, I guess. We weren't together but we weren't... not."

She took a deep breath. "And then I slept with Jess. I don't have a good excuse for it. We dated in high school, I guess I should have mentioned that before, and I was still technically single and I just... I had always wanted to.

"When I got pregnant, I assumed Logan was the father. Mathematically it was more... likely, though I'm not so sure now. We got married and you were born. I never told anyone about Jess and I, and I can't think of anyone he would tell."

She trailed off. They were quiet for a long time. Alice stared out at the tranquil water. It sparkled in the moonlight. Her mother's face was lit by the glow of the reflected water. Their legs dangled, skimming the surface. She felt the kind of stillness and peace that only came after a shock.

"Do you like this bridge?" Her mother asked suddenly.

She shrugged, "It's peaceful."

"Maybe you are his daughter."

"It's too early for jokes, Mom!"

"Right. Sorry."

More silence. A light breeze rustled at her hair. She shivered.

"It's totally your choice, okay sweetheart? If you want to forget this whole night ever happened, then fine. But if you want to know the truth..."

"I want to know."

Her Mom touched her hair softly. Alice sees there are tears glistening in her eyes. It reminds her of the moon reflected in the lake.

"Okay. Your father will have to be told. He'll probably, I mean he won't- I can't see-"

"He'll probably disown me, I know. A scandal like this on his precious name!" She kicks the air above the water. "Why'd you choose him?"

"Because he was dependable. I know Jess seems cool. He is cool. He has great taste, and he can write like nobody else. But he bailed on me, on our relationship, too many times. He's not so dependable. But Logan, Logan could support us. He was predictable, for all his talk of rebellion and his stupid risk taking."

"Oh."

* * *

He is waiting for them at her grandparents' house when they return. She hadn't expected him to still be there, and she can tell by the way that her mother's arm around her shoulder tenses that she hadn't either. She does nothing, however, but to give Alice's shoulders a squeeze and smile reassuringly at both of them as she enters the house and leaves them alone outside.

He is sitting on the porch steps, smoking a cigarette. He looks a little beat, and she realises that she must not be looking to good either. Self consciously, she smoothes her hair and rearranges her cardigan. She stoops down to sit beside him. He glances at her as she wraps her arms around herself, more out of discomfort at the situation than anything else.

"You cold?"

"A little numb," she murmurs. "But not cold."

He nods, "I can bet. Some night."

"Some night." She shifts uncomfortably. "How long have thought you might be..." She can't even bring herself to say the words.

"Only since you visited." He takes a drag of his cigarette, and she takes comfort in the fact that she is not the only one who is clearly very uncomfortable right now. "I knew Rory had a daughter, but I thought you were younger. Then I met you and I started counting in my head. You just...didn't seem like the daughter of that jerk."

"Mom seems pretty sure that I am."

He shrugs. "Of course she is. She's Cleopatra, always has been," he says bitterly.

"Queen of Denial," she figures out, and he nods.

"What do you think?" She asks softly.

"Honestly?"

"Seems to be the theme of the night."

He hesitates for a second. . He looks at her, and the gold flecks in his eyes glitter in the dark. "I think you have my eyes," he motions towards her face "I think you have my hair colour and texture. I think you smile a little like me sometimes." He stubs his cigarette on the ground. "Look, I know you didn't ask for this. I'm not trying to come in and upset your whole life. If you don't want to know, that's your prerogative. You already have a father, and I'm sure you're pretty fond of each other."

"Okay," she says quietly.

"But," he continues and his voice is a little softer, "if you do want to know, then I'm here. Even if it comes up negative. I screwed up a lot with your mom when I was younger, but I'm not going anywhere. You can come to me if you need anything. You can count on me."

She nods, but finds herself biting her bottom lip as she recalls her mother's words on the bridge.

"You can take my word for it, but I'd prefer to prove it." He smiles a little at her, and she can't help but smile back. He lights another cigarette. "Don't worry, I get it. My dad appeared in my life when I was 17. I didn't ask him to but he did. And then I had to know everything I could about him. Was I going to end up just like him, did I inherit anything from him, things like that." He looks at her sideways. "I get what how it feels to have your father suddenly appear in your life. And April," he added, "she's got a pretty good idea as well."

He falls silent. She finds herself studying his profile as he scuffs the dirt beneath them with his foot. The slope of his nose, his cheekbones, his chin: she mentally catalogues the contours of his face and tries to compare them to her own.

"I don't know what to think," she confesses.

He shifts and raises an eyebrow at her. "Should you?"

She shrugs and they fall silent again. It is not exactly an uncomfortable silence. She gets the feeling he isn't that much of a talker anyway. In the distance, she can hear the back door slam and strains to hear a heated discussion between her mother and grandmother.

"...heard of contraception...once but twice!"

"I know but with Logan I had just finished a dose of antibiotics, remember ... And with Jess it just, I don't know, I can't even remember if we did or not...heat of the moment, you know?"

"That good, huh? Oh! I did not want to know that!"

Jess chuckles beside her and she blushes furiously.

"I think that's my cue to leave." He smiles at her kindly and bumps his knee against hers.

"Luke has my number. You call me if...well for whatever. Okay?"

She nods and he tentatively and a little awkwardly pats her arm. "Night, Alice."

"Night."

He crunches down the gravel path, gets into his car, and disappears from sight. She sits outside for a few more minutes before Luke appears at the door behind her.

"I thought I heard a car leaving," he remarks. She marvels at how calm he is about all of this. "Come on kid, I think it's time for bed. You and your mom are staying here tonight."

"I'm suddenly feeling very drained," she agrees.

"Really? I wonder why that is."

She shrugs dramatically and follows him inside.

* * *

The phone call that transpired between her mother and father was, well, intense, to say the least. Most of it cannot be related in print, anyway. If _Harry Potter_ can be banned, then this conversation certainly would be. So, we shall gloss over it in the name of decorum and not corrupting the youth of America (Taylor would be so proud!) and move swiftly on to the conversation between father and daughter (who is a minor, so Logan, hold your tongue!).

Alice had given up on the espionage lifestyle. She was too good at it, and she was hurting nobody but herself. So instead of leaning against the door with a glass tumbler and straining to hear through several inches of solid oak, she was lying on her bed. Actually she was lying with her pillow over her head, because if she had wanted to hear them it'd be impossible, but because she didn't want to hear a thing, the phone had stuck itself on speakerphone and her mother's voice had raised several decibels to be heard over her father's shouting.

Eventually, however, her mother came into to her, messy-haired and red-eyed, looking like she had barely survived a wild boar attack. She pressed the phone into Alice's hand. Alice, being a teenager and capable of operating modern technology, quickly pressed the correct sequence of buttons to turn off the speaker and cradled the phone to her ear.

"Hey dad." Her voice was soft and breathy and needy. It was completely pathetic, even to her own ears. He breathed deeply, and his familiar voice broke through.

"Can you even call me that anymore?"

Oh, jeez.

"You're still my dad," she mumbled into the phone, feeling like a baby.

"For now," he muttered under his breath. She heard him. "Ally, this is going to be a nightmare, logistically."

"You mean publically," she accused.

"Well, yes," he admitted. "Maybe...we'll talk after the results, okay?"

"That might take months, dad."

"I'm sure I can pull some strings. Although doing so and not drawing the attention of the press will be...maybe I can get my assistant to-"

"Dad," she interrupted. "What happens if the results...what if I'm not..."

He sighed heavily.

"Then, you're not." His tone was flat.

She felt crushed, absolutely crushed.

"Oh."

"Yeah. Look, I'm sure it'll be fine. Soon this will all be over and we can go to Paris or get ice-cream or something. I have to go and make some calls. Night." And then he was gone.

A little dumbfounded, Alice stared at the phone for another minute or so. "Goodbye Logan," she murmered sadly, and threw the phone against the room. It made a satisfying thud, and she leaned back on the bed and thought about it for another ten minutes, until her mother's tentative know brought her back to consciousness. Rory stuck her head into the room and surveyed her daughter.

"Well?"

"Disowned," she said flatly, and morosely stared up at the ceiling. She had to work very hard to blink away her tears.

Thankfully, her mother didn't want to talk about it either. "You want some ice-cream?"

"God, yes." She pulled herself off the bed. "Willy Wonka?"

"I'll get the marshmallows."

"Aren't there marshmallows in the Ben & Jerry's?"

Her mother caught her as she passed her. She lifted her chin and smoothed her hair. It was an achingly familiar motion; something Alice remembered her doing since she was a child.

"What an idiot. You're the greatest kid in the world."

"Thanks mom," she tried to smile but it came out a little watery.

"So...red vines?"

* * *

_"I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then"- Alice in Wonderland_

 

* * *

 


	4. Three: All the World Is Green

Her mother took out a load of boxes and cried her way through Saturday. They were boxes of memories, of ex-boyfriends and ex-husbands and Alice's childhood. Alice attempted to join her, but the sight of her mother periodically bursting into tears got a little disconcerting, so she left her to herself. After a few hours, her mother went to bed, and Alice relapsed on her sleuthing ban. She snuck into the living room and dug through the boxes. She wasn't quite sure what she was looking for, but the curiosity was unbearable. _I can resist anything except temptation,_ she thought. _Thank you, Oscar Wilde_. Reasoning that she had already been looking with her mother, who clearly didn't have a problem with it, she brushed her guilt aside. It didn't stop her, however, from being extra careful and quiet so as not to wake her mother.

The first box was labelled _Dean_ in her mother's loopy script. It was the biggest box, and in it Alice found the predictable paraphernalia associated with high school sweethearts. Movie ticket stubs, love letters, and a heart-shaped bracelet. There was also the curious addition of a box of corn starch, a navy dress and a Dorothy Parker book. Alice didn't remember hearing anything about a Dean, and the picture she found of them did nothing to jog any long-forgotten memories. Her mother, looking a lot like Alice did now minus the brown eyes and with a little lighter hair, was standing with a tall boy who looked like a rejected Backstreet Boy. They were at some kind of function: he was wearing tails and Rory was wearing a while tulle dress that could only have been picked out by Emily Gilmore. They were sickeningly cute and stereotypically conventional, and Alice couldn't help but think that it was unconsciously staged, like they knew what couples were supposed to look like and were forcing themselves to fit that mould.

She didn't find much of interest in Dean and her mother's relationship, so she moved on to another box. It was filled with old baby clothes and rattles and a picture of the day of her birth. Mother, grandmother and great-grandmother clustered around her, and everyone, including Alice, was crying. It was a sweet picture, and Alice found herself wishing she remembered more of her great-grandmother, who died when she was nine. Logan hadn't been there when she was born; he was making his way to Hartford from half-way across the country when her mother went into labour. Her grandmother had gone into the delivery room with her, and in a way Alice knew her mother preferred it that way.

The third box was dedicated to _Logan_. It was too small to contain all their memories together; a whole marriage could not be squashed inside a limp, worn little cardboard box. There was furniture in their house that they had brought from their old house, and jewellery in her mother's jewellery box that he had given her, but as a whole he seemed not to have left much by way of remembrance. Alice wasn't sure whether that was a conscious decision of her mother's to build a life apart from him, or if it indicated the little effect he had on their lives even then. There was a large rocket in the box, which made absolutely no sense to Alice, and their wedding album. Their wedding was large and extravagant. Nobody but Emily looked to be truly genuine in their happiness in the photos, and that included her father. Looking at the photos reminded her of her mother when she was a child, before the divorce. She was very put together all of the time, very professional, and very good at hosting parties. But Alice preferred her mom these days, who wore jeans and no heels, and who spent her evenings eating junk food and mocking terrible movies.

The last box was the one she had been waiting for. _Jess_ 's box. It was smaller than Alice had hoped, but extremely heavy. She opened the box to discover this was due to a pile of books stacked haphazardly in the box. She smirked to herself, expecting nothing else from a journalist who dated a writer. The book choices were unusual, however: Ginsberg, Dickens, Hemingway, Rand. As she flicked through the pages she understood why they were in the box when she saw Jess' distinctive handwriting in the margins. _The Subsect_ was jammed down the side of the box, probably having fallen down from the top of the pile when the box was transported. She was surprised to find it blank and in pristine condition. On the title page, however, she found his handwriting again.

It said, very succinctly: _Rory, I couldn't have done it without you._

The rest of the box provided her with little information. She found a concert ticket, a return bus ticket to New York City and a stack of letters with only _Dear Jess_ written on them. Disappointed, she put the boxes away and went to bed. She had hoped to find any indication of their relationship together, even a picture or some letters that would explain everything. Instead, all she had was fragments.

It was a mission doomed to failure, she admitted to herself. There was no evidence that she and Jess had ever spent any time together. They hadn't gone to school together, so her mother's high school yearbook was a bust, and Jess didn't even have a picture of himself on the dust jacket of his books let alone allow himself to be photographed at some family function. They hadn't even seen each other in twenty years, since...

Luke and Lorelai's wedding! Surely there would be something there! She knew her mother had a photo album somewhere and she upended several drawers of photos in order to find it. The album was almost an exact copy of the official album belonging to her grandparents. She found a very young Jess on page two, standing beside Luke and looking less-than-happy to be wearing a suit. He was clean-shaven with messy hair and a half-smile that failed to hide his discomfort with his attire. She wondered why she never noticed him before, and then realised why when her eyes were drawn to the picture on the facing page of her mother and grandmother beaming ecstatically and looking incredibly radiant. There was another picture of him with Liz and a toddler Doula, and he featured in the group photo. He was scowling in both of those pictures, and he was neither standing near her mother nor looking at her in any photos. Frustrated, Alice looked through the entire album again, concentrating on the background of each picture.

Unfortunately, a last-minute catastrophe had incapacitated their photographer, and Kirk had taken over. At least half of the several hundreds of photos he took were of Lulu, dozens were upside-down, and many times he missed the faces of those he was aiming to shoot. This worked out to her advantage, however, because about halfway into the album she found what she was looking for. Behind Taylor's crotch were Rory and Jess, sitting very close with their heads bent. They looked in deep conversation. The next two pictures also featured them, but here they were smiling a little. They were so engrossed in each other they did not notice that Kirk had fallen over. The last photo had clearly been taken from the floor, while concerned guests ran towards the camera with arms outstretched. Rory and Jess, however, in the top right hand corner, had eyes only for each other. Alice liked that it clearly had not been staged like the pictures of her mother's other relationships. The expressions on their faces were genuine.

She didn't know exactly when she fell asleep, but Alice awoke the next morning with a picture of Lulu's nose stuck to her right cheek, and a post it stuck to her other cheek.

 _Veronica Mars- find me at Luke's. I knew you'd go looking through those boxes. Love Mom_.

* * *

Two weeks later, Fate stepped up and played its part. Their DNA was sent off; the interminable wait had begun. Alice still wasn't sure how she felt, and though she fully intended to call Jess, she hadn't found a good reason to do so. Sure, she still had an interview to complete, but it seemed so unimportant now, considering their situation.

In truth, she was a little disappointed with Fate. He must have had an off-day or something, because the events that transpired were so unbearably clichéd that Daytime Television would have lapped it up. A little originality would have been appreciated, but apparently the Universe had come down with a severe case writer's block or was hung-over or something (Ahem.), because the resulting lazy hotchpotch of serendipitous circumstances that unfolded were incredibly unsatisfactory.

During lunch, Alice's slight cough transmuted into a bad flu that made her suddenly very feverish and woozy. The kicker: Her mother was in Boston chasing up a lead and visiting Paris on the way. Her grandmother had gone with her mother to Boston to shop while Rory worked, Luke was manning the diner by himself during the lunch rush, and Logan was somewhere over Idaho. Over the phone, Luke offered the only suitable alternative, and she resigned herself to the only option left. "Call him," she croaked, and he sighed and complied.

He arrived within fifteen minutes.

Sure, he lived nearby, but Alice got the feeling he had rushed a little bit. She couldn't be certain, however, and she fell asleep in the car too quickly to count or check his speed on the way back to his house. It was a very woozy and grumpy Alice that Jess had to shake awake and half-drag out of the car. Once in the house, she managed to wake up enough to pull herself up the stairs, to the immeasurable relief of the man holding her up. He steered her into the guest room, swore emphatically at the unprepared bed, and turned around and half-carried her to his own bedroom. She crawled into his bed without removing her uniform, but simply kicked off her plimsolls and flopped face-first into the pillow.

When she woke up several hours later, she was in a strange bed, and her entire body was sore. She rolled over on her side, and realised that Jess was sitting beside her on the bed, reading Chekhov and making notes in the book. He was wearing glasses perched on his nose, and there were papers strewn all over the bed. From her limited vantage point she could she scribblings that must have been written by him, crossed out several times and rewritten. He was on the phone, probably with her mother. "How are you feeling?" he asked briefly looking at her.

"Gnuh," she moaned, and rolled over.

He nodded on the phone to something her mother said and leaned over, holding the phone in place with his shoulder, to place one hand on her forehead and the other at the nape of her neck. The familiarity of such a simple action took Alice by surprise. She leaned into his touch and felt deliciously comforted. "You've definitely got a temperature," he murmured. "Take that aspirin and try to get some more sleep."

She could hear her mother demanding questions on the other end, and he rolled his eyes but patiently answered her in the detail she demanded.

The sun was setting outside, and dusky evening was beginning its descent.

He hung up. "Rory's on her way. There's aspirin on the bedside locker. You want something to eat? Luke said something about mashed potatoes..."

She shook her head and moaned again. She couldn't see it, but she really did look pathetic, with her tousled hair and huge sad eyes. She was worryingly pale asleep, but since she had woken up a dangerous flush had risen on her cheeks.

No matter, her mother was only two blocks away at this point. She sunk into the pillows and let sleep take her again.

* * *

Alice didn't know it, but she slept through her mother's arrival. She slept through the examination Rory gave her and the awkward conversation between her mother and possible father downstairs. We won't tell her about it, because she would be so disappointed, and really it is not her fault that she does not have the all-seeing omnipresence of you, dear readers, and it would be cruel of us to rub her face in it.

As conversations went, it wasn't going to win any prizes anyway. In fact, if you happened to be waiting for this conversation for a long time, say, several years, the way in which it's going to go down is never going to be good enough, is it?

Needless to say, there was a lot of awkward shifting and avoidance of eyes. This was interspersed with long moments of prolonged eye contact in which they said all they could never say out loud to each other (which makes it a bit difficult to describe).

"So, this is your house?"

"Yup."

"It's... nice."

"It does the job."

"Yeah. How's Truncheon Incorporated?"

"Good."

"Good, that's good. Um, and the writing, how's that going?"

"It's going."

"Good."

The clock's ticking cut loudly through their silence. Jess was pretty sure he didn't own a clock, but it was a nice touch nonetheless. It added a certain ambiance. He craned his neck around the room, but ultimately concluded it must be hidden under a pile of books or something.

He cleared his throat loudly. "And you? How's work?"

"Great. I'm writing a weekly column for the New York Times now. It's not exactly a war zone but it pays the bills, and its fun. I like it."

"Good for you."

"Thanks."

They both sighed heavily. They caught each other's eye and half-smiled. "What happened to us?" Jess mused.

Rory sighed. "I have to apologise. Again. I should never have hid Alice from you."

He nodded. "You shouldn't have. I can't forgive you for that, though I can understand your motives." He fixed her with a steely glare. "You didn't think that even if she is Logan's, I would have raised her as my own. I just wanted to be with you, no matter what."

Rory looked like she was going to cry. "I wasn't thinking like that. That wasn't how it was."

"You didn't have to go back to him," Jess said sadly. "We were doing so well."

"Were we?" she found her voice. "Trying to make it long-distance, rehashing the same arguments, the same problems in our past, day after day?"

"We were working through them!"

"Logan was dependable!" she screamed suddenly. "He was stable!"

"Bullshit! You only thought he was. I had a career, a house, a life! I pay taxes, I contribute to society! But you couldn't see past the stupid eighteen year old who sped away from you on a bus."

"Well, Logan never left me," she tried to defend herself, but she seemed to know it was a losing battle."

"He left you a few years ago, didn't he? For his secretary I heard. Caused quite the scandal in this part of town, you know!"

That seemed to strip her of the fight left in her. She collapsed back on the sofa, breathing heavily. Eventually, Jess did the same.

"I didn't come to fight," she said softly.

He nodded. "Ok."

"It wasn't...I didn't think you would be a bad father, Jess, but I was so scared. I could live my life in the fear of waking up one morning and finding you gone, but I couldn't do that with a baby. Logan represented stability in my head. It was wrong. But I did love him, most of the time. And I think, in hindsight, that I made the right choice. I'm sorry for whom I hurt, but I wouldn't do it any different."

He didn't respond, but rubbed his face with his hand, suddenly exhausted. "And how's he taking this? Logan, that is."

She sighed. "Badly. I can't blame him really. I think he always suspected, but you know how it is in high society, if nobody says it, it isn't real. Why air your dirty laundry for the world to see?" She took a sip of her cold coffee and made a face. "He really upset Alice. He told her he didn't want to talk to her until we get the test results. She's taking it as estrangement."

"What a jerk," Jess muttered.

"She's a great kid isn't she?" Rory smiled.

"Yeah," he replied. "A great kid."

She looked outside. "I guess I better hit the road, it's getting dark. Make sure she takes some cough syrup, and some aspirin."

He looked at her seriously. "Or you could stay the night."

She bit her lip. "I don't know..."

"Come on, Rory. You know you'll be up all night worrying about her anyway. I'm no good at playing nurse. Sleep in my bed with her, and I'll take the spare room."

"Are you sure?"

"It'll give me a change of scenery."

"Well, alright. If you're sure."

They smiled at each other. But only for a moment.

* * *

In the morning, Jess cooked them breakfast. The three of them shared the one newspaper between them, and Alice was struck with the sudden overwhelming desire to have the rest of her life be like this. The early morning light streaming through the windows bathed the whole kitchen in an harsh but warm glow which she breathed in and felt settle in her stomach, to remain there for the rest of the day. Jess and Rory weren't talking, at least not comfortably, and Alice did little but cough her way through the morning, but still, it was nice.

* * *

"How's Sly taking it?"

Lorelai and Rory were sitting in the diner, being waited on by a bored-looking, gum-snapping Doula.

"Pretty well," Rory shrugged. "Considering the circumstances, I mean. He wants to be there for her."

"And the girl in question?"

Rory sighed. "Okay, I guess. She's over that flu, thank God. But her grades have slipped a bit, and her teachers have been telling me she's been very distracted in class."

"That's pretty normal, though, isn't it? For a teenager. She's not like you all the time," Lorelai teased her. "She's always been more likely to read a book instead of study."

"Yes, but her grades are starting to suffer. I'm afraid it's an indication of something bigger. She's going through a lot. Ever since the divorce she's become more and more self-contained. She quit the track team, remember how much she used to love that? And she has no friends in Chilton, and she barely hangs out with Audrey and Will."

"She'll be fine, hun. She's just adjusting. Has Logan called?"

Rory shook her head. "No, and I think that's really getting to her."

Lorelai patted her hand. "It'll all work out in the end, don't you worry about it."

Rory nodded, but continued to look worried.

"So are you ever going to tell me what happened with Jess?" Lorelai's smile as she sipped her coffee was wicked.

"Oh so now that you like Jess you want to know?"

"He had to grow on me eventually! Technically he is my nephew after all."

She avoided her mother's eyes while Lorelai continued to smile at her. Finally she gave up and threw her hands in the air.

"There's nothing to tell! We got talking at your wedding and slept together a few weeks later. I thought maybe we were going to get back together but then I got pregnant. I really did think Alice was Logan's."

"I know all this."

"What do you want to know then?" Rory asked crankily.

"Did you love him?"

"When?"

"Whenever."

Rory shifted in her seat. "I don't know."

"And if you hadn't gotten pregnant would you have stayed with Jess?"

"I don't know," Rory sighed. "Maybe. Probably not. We were having trouble reconciling our pasts. But I think he wanted us to be together." She started glumly into her coffee.

"You know," Lorelai said tentatively. "It's not too late."

"He hates me," Rory said softly. "And I don't even know if I want him.

"Well, something to think about," Lorelai said, and then dropped the subject.

* * *

The scene onto which Rory Gilmore walked into her house would have made an older Lorelai cry. There stood her daughter, fruit of her loins, carrier of her DNA, covered in flour and _baking_. "Hi, Mom," she announced brightly. She held up a tray. "Cookie?"

Rory burst into tears.

"They're actually really nice, not like that time Grandma tried to make cupcakes and set the refrigerator on fire."

This only served to make Rory cry harder.

"Mom? What's wrong?"

"I'm a terrible mother. I've failed you!"

"I was just trying to get my mind off everything. And I got hungry...a Gilmore's gotta get food somehow, right?" She beamed at her mother.

"Oh God," Rory wailed. "Come here." And she proceeded to hug the air out of her daughter's lungs.

"Mom, whoa, what's going on with you?"

"You're not okay! You keep saying you're okay but obviously you're not. You're crying for attention."

"Mom," Alice said in her sternest tone, "have you been reading the psychology books again. Remember the reverse psychology episode? I thought I threw them all out."

"I bought more," she admitted. "I didn't know what else to do."

"Oh, Mom! Buck up! I really am fine. Not deliriously happy with the events of the last few months of my life, but I haven't started listening to My Chemical Romance or anything."

Rory sniffled. "Are you sure."

Alice nodded.

"And you'll tell me if you're not fine?"

"Hope to die." Alice crossed her fingers over her heart. She then clapped her floury hands together. "Now, is it alright if I make brownies, or is it going to cause you to kill yourself?"


	5. Four: Pickin' Up After You

"I slept in his bed," Rory confided to her mother a few days later and completely out of the blue.

"What?" Lorelai asked, confused. They had been discussing the newest Tom Cruise movie two seconds beforehand. "Is it small?"

Rory sighed exasperatedly. "Not Tom Cruise's bed, Mom. Jess's!"

Lorelai gasped. "Last night?"

"No," Rory waved her away with a dismissive hand gesture. "When Alice was sick. We both stayed in his bed and he slept in the guest room."

Lorelai crinkled her nose. "Weird. Or kinky?"

"Weird," Rory confirmed. She stirred her coffee needlessly, and then added, in a forcedly conversational tone, "It smelled like him."

"Well, I'd have been worried if it smelled like Tom Cruise. What do you think he smells like anyway? I like to think vanilla, because of _Vanilla Sky_."

"I don't know," Rory said forcefully. "Can we get back to my ex-boyfriend's bed?"

"I don't know if the three of us would fit." Lorelai grinned wickedly.

Rory groaned and hid her face in her hands.

"What's wrong with her?" Alice appeared by their side, after grabbing a doughnut from the counter and enduring a long lecture from Luke. Into her other hand he had pressed an apple. She slipped into the chair across from her mother and beside Lorelai, weighed each in her hands, and began eating the doughnut.

"Tom Cruise smells like vanilla."

"Bummer," Alice sympathised, and stole her mother's coffee while she was busy moaning into the table at how hard she banged her head. "I always suspected magnolia."

"Or cocktails," Luke appeared by their side, a to-go cup of coffee for Alice in his hand. "Here, and I want to see you eat that apple before you leave."

Alice put her hand on her heart and gave him her most innocent eyes. "Put them away," Luke commanded. She widened her eyes a little. Bingo. His face softened, and he ambled away grumbling to himself.

"What's with the cup?" Lorelai asked her.

"Gotta finish my interview," Alice responded.

Rory's head shot up.

"Thank God," Lorelai sighed. "I thought you'd fallen asleep. On shopping day, no less!"

"You're meeting Jess?" Rory asked.

Alice shrugged. "Maybe. He said I could go with him to see Truncheon."

"He's bringing you to Philadelphia?" Suddenly Rory was on her feet.

"No, to their store in Hartford. Jeez, what is up with you today?"

"Nothing," Rory seemed to collect herself, and slowly sat back down again. She shook her head as if she were trying to dislodge a bad thought."Yeah, sorry. I'm feeling a bit weird today."

"Aw, poor thing. Not sleeping well?" Lorelai inquired devilishly.

Rory shot her a murderous glare, and then briskly returned to business. "Are you sure you're well enough, honey? I don't want you overtaxing yourself."

Alice rolled her eyes. "I've been back in school for a week now, Mom. You keep making me rest. I'm fine!"

"Yes," Rory argued. "But sometimes when you don't do any exercise for a long time, you end up feeling worse. You have to spend energy to get energy."

"But, I..." Alice sighed deeply and looked at Lorelai. "Tag out."

"In," Lorelai smiled. They performed what they presumed was a very masculine wrestler's high five.

"I'm going to go now, before she starts clinging to my legs and I have to drag her out of the diner on her belly while shaking my legs awkwardly to shake her off. I can't be exerting myself in that way wearing skinny jeans. They might rip."

"Cool, sweets. Don't let Jess run away."

"Will do."

And she was gone. Lorelai leaned over toward her oldest daughter. "Hey, what's that smell? It smells like...old books, and leather, and cigarettes, and ink. Oh, and do I detect a hint of teenage rebellion turned bohemianesque respectability?"

"Screw you," Rory groaned half-heartedly.

Lorelai giggled maniacally.

* * *

"So...this is Truncheon."

Alice glanced around his outstretched arm, peering around the store appreciatively.

"I like it," she beamed.

"It pays the bills," Jess shrugged. "Come here, I wanna show you something."

He led her to the back, behind a bunch of cash registers, customers, sculptures, and a sole man playing the saxophone, to a little alcove. In it was a desk and shelf upon shelf of books.

"Oooh," said appreciatively, and then hesitated. "What is it?"

"My desk," he shrugged. "But I never use it. I figured if you ever want a quiet place to do your homework, then you could come here. I mean it's close to your school and..." he rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. "It's not much. Nothing really."

"It's awesome," she said brightly. "There are probably as many books here as the Chilton library! And you can't even hear the sax player back here."

"Yeah," Jess said, glancing behind him with his brow furrowed. "I have no idea who that guy is. I definitely didn't hire him."

"Why don't you ask your staff? It must have been one of them."

He sighed. "Then they'll probably figure out that I haven't got a clue who any of them are."

He had the grace to look a little embarrassed.

She giggled. "So... can we stay here a while?"

"All day if you want. I should probably get some work done anyway."

"Can I observe you?" She asked excitedly, slipping her backpack off her shoulders and dumping it at her feet.

"Not much to observe," he smiled. "Not unless you want to watch me read?"

She crinkled her nose. "Since when is that work?"

"Since I decided to try my hand at short stories for the first time, and now I need to research them."

"Well, what have you got in mind?"

"Come help me decide," he motioned to her, and they went back into the store proper.

They stopped in front of the Russian literature section. "Do we have a specific nationality in mind?" she asked him.

"Nope. Grab the Chekhov and Gogol and meet me in Modern American Classics."

Alice grabbed the book and pulled out a collection of Nabokov stories on her way. She found Jess in by the _A's_ , holding _Winesburg, Ohio_ in his hand, and a scowl on his face. "Not an Anderson fan?" she questioned.

"Not particularly. I mean, _Hands_ is great, but that's about it. But," he mused. "The structure is probably the closest to what I'm going for. That kind of connection between the stories, like the way he uses the town as the link between the characters."

"Add it to the pile," she motioned with her chin at the books in her hands. He smiled and put it on the top.

" _New Yorker_ authors?" she asked.

He shrugged. "Can't hurt." He picked up two books. "Cheever or Updike?"

"Both," she grinned, and he sighed.

"This is going to take a while."

"Buck up, you baby. Ooh, Salinger! _Raise High The Roofbeams, Carpenter_ or _Nine Stories_?"

" _Nine Stories_. Raymond Carver?"

"Go for it. _Dubliners_?"

"Definitely. _The Yellow Wallpaper_?"

"Depends. Are you going for a horror vibe?"

"Nah. Leave it. Here, wait a minute. I'll bring this stack over to the table."

He returned a few minutes later to find her pouring over _The Old Man in the Sea_.

"No need," he gestured to the book. "I think I know it off-by-heart by now."

She left it back. "How many have we got now?"

"Too many. But way too many American writers, three Russians and one Irish. We need some English."

"Well here we go," Alice said, picking up a book of children's stories. " _The Happy Prince_ by Oscar Wilde. That's an English for you."

"Nope," he shook his head and pointed at the book. "Irish."

"Really? Huh. I never knew."

"I'll take it anyway, another Irish can't hurt."

"What about Dickens?"

He looked at her strangely for a minute. "Yeah," he said finally. "Dickens is good."

She spotted another book. "Dumas! Are we doing French?"

"Sure," he sighed good-naturedly.

She finally found an English writer: D.H. Lawrence. They both made a face, looked at each other, and Alice carefully put the book back.

"H.G. Wells," Jess announced, sounding relieved. "That'll do for now, I think."

"Okay," she said sadly.

"You know, you wouldn't be this gung-ho if you had to read all these books."

She grinned. "I wish I could read instead of doing homework."

He shrugged. "So do. Bunk off with me."

She bit her lip. "I suppose I can do my homework tomorrow. It is what Sundays evenings were invented for."

"I'll let you read Chekhov." He waved the book in her face teasingly.

She followed it with her eyes as he waved it. "Does it have _The Lady and The Dog_ in it?"

He raised his eyebrows in disbelief and adopted a hurt expression. "Do you think I would stock a collection of Chekhov's short stories without it?"

She sighed sadly, then grabbed the book out of his hands and bounded back toward the back room, grinning.

She couldn't see it, but behind her, Jess was grinning as well.

* * *

"Here's the plan. Shopping in the morning. Then lunch in the food court, of course. Then the book store, and then we go for an early dinner at Grandma and Grandpa's, so that you can be home in time to do your homework."

Alice froze in the act of helping her mother put new sheets on her bed. "What?"

"Alice! I need your help here. I don't want to get tangled up in this thing again!"

"Why would you think I haven't done my homework?"

Her mother shot her a sly look. "I remember how persuasive Jess can be at getting people to avoid doing homework."

Alice blushed. "It was still educational-based."

Rory raised her eyebrows. "What did you read?"

"Russian short stories," Alice said meekly.

Rory sighed and swept out of the room. "That jerk knows the Russians are my weakness," Alice heard her mutter as she passed.

* * *

The doorbell rang and rang and rang.

"MOM! SOMEBODY'S AT THE DOOR! MOM! MOM!"

Rory stumbled out of her bedroom. "Jeez, I hear you, grumpy! Don't mind, I'll get it. You obviously need your beauty sleep!"

Alice gasped in horror from her room.

Rory finally got to the door, bleary-eyed and just as grumpy. "All right, all right, calm down."

She opened the door only to be pushed backward as a blur sped past her.

"Where is she? Where is she?"

Rory stared at her in utter incomprehension. "Liz?" she asked sleepily. "What's going on?"

But Liz had just caught sight of Alice, standing in the doorway to her bedroom in her heart pyjamas and her hair completely mussed.

She screamed.

Twice.

Alice shot her mother a half-baffled, half-horrified look, to which Rory could only shrug.

"Oh my God! Oh my God!" Liz was repeating over and over again. "Can you believe it?"

She swept Alice into her arms and squeezed tight.

"Aunt Liz!" Alice wheezed, struggling for breath and comprehension.

"Grandma Liz," Liz interrupted her, and pulled away. She surveyed Alice carefully. "Jess just told me. Not that anyone around here tells me anything until months too late but-," and she suddenly was squealing again.

"Now Liz," Rory pulled her gently out of the vice-grip hold she had on Alice's shoulders. "We're not getting ahead of ourselves. Don't get your hopes up."

"Oh please, she's obviously a Danes. Look at that grumpy set of her jaw."

Rory suppressed a smile as Alice glared. Liz pointed at her excitedly. "Don't tell me that's not a patented Jess-expression."

"She's been spending a lot of time with Jess," Rory reasoned. "He's rubbing off on her."

"Like he rubbed off on you?" Liz joked, digging her elbows into Rory's side.

"Liz!" Rory gasped, scandalized.

"Relax, I'm just kidding around with ya," Liz apologized, winking at a giggling Alice.

"Look, Liz, um, Alice has to get to school, so..."

"Oh, of course," she said brightly. "But you two have to come to dinner. I won't take no for an answer. Granddaughter or step-great-niece, I don't get to see enough of you as it is."

Rory sighed inaudibly and gave in. Liz had a way of wearing you down.

* * *

"You know, if Jess does turn out to be my biological father, then that will make us legitimately blood-related. You'll be my great-uncle."

"Sure," Luke grunted. "Great-uncle and step-grandfather. This is the most dysfunctional family since the Tudors."

"Wouldn't that be cool, though," she persisted.

Luke put down the rag in his hands and looked her gravely in the eye. "It doesn't matter; I will always love you, regardless of blood or any other distractions. Even if your father turns out to be Patrick Swayze, or Charles Manson, or George Bush. Do I make myself clear?"

She blushed and looked down at her soda.

"Yes."

"Good. Now eat your carrot sticks."

* * *

Rory arrived home tired and spent after a long day at work. Alice was covering for Audrey in Luke's, and probably would not need to be picked up for a few hours at least. She was desperate for a long bath, and a night spend organizing her laundry. As she pulled up in front of the house, she idly wondered which scented fabric softener to use. Lavender or lemon? As she shut the door to her car, she saw the figure sitting on her front steps.

Sighing, she kissed her peaceful night goodbye.

As she made her way over to the door he stood, brushing dust from his slacks. "Hey."

She sighed again. "Hi." A pause. "I didn't expect you so soon."

"I know," he admitted. "But I had an epiphany."

She snorted. "Sure you did."

"Come on, Ace," he smiled contritely.

"Don't call me that. You can't call me that anymore," she muttered. "I think I put that in the divorce papers."

"And you nearly nullified the divorce writing that little note in the margins," he smiled.

She half-smiled in return. "Come on, Rory," he tried again. "We both know I messed up."

She stared at him a minute, and then relented. "Did you at least bring coffee?"

He held up three to-go cups. She opened the door.

* * *

_"They had no conversation together, no intercourse but what the commonest civility required. Once so much to each other! Now nothing! There had been a time, when ... they would have found it most difficult to cease to speak to one another ...Now they were as strangers; nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted. It was a perpetual estrangement."_

 

* * *

 

Alice spent her evening covering for Audrey at Luke's because she had come down with mono. After two hours, however, of teasing Luke about how and where Audrey could have possibly picked up such a _contagious_ illness, Luke ran out of patience and sent her home early so that he could lock up in peace. When she got home, however, she found one of the most bizarre sights she had ever seen in her relatively short life: her mother and her father, sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and _not fighting_. When she entered, Logan stood up and looked at her uncomfortably.

"Alice," her mother said softly and nervously. "Look who's here!"

"Yeah, I have eyes, thanks!" Alice snapped.

She turned on her heel and stomped up the stairs to her room, slamming the door as she went. She flopped onto her bed initially, but found this insufficiently dramatic, and decided to try huffing around the room. She was considering pushing all the photos on her beside locker onto the floor angrily when the inevitable knock on the door interrupted her.

In truth, she was surprised that he had even bothered knocking. Logan Huntzberger was not the kind of man who patiently waited outside for her to calm down and let him in. He was the kind of person who breezed in, invaded her personal space, and persuaded her of his way of thinking. And this is exactly what he did next. As he peeked his head through the door, Alice considered pitching a porcelain unicorn at his head. She reconsidered, however, and settled for plopping onto the bed again.

"Can we talk?" he asked meekly.

"That depends. Can you bear to speak to a stranger who isn't related to you?" she shot back.

He stepped into the room and sat down gingerly on the end of the bed. "I deserved that," he admitted.

She absently played with a thread on the cushion in her arms.

"Alice," he began. "I am so sorry."

She sunk lower into the bed and refused to meet his eyes.

"I know that what I said was completely out of line. I was mad; I was in shock."

"Everyone was," she mumbled. "Nobody else decided to erase me from their life."

"I didn't decide to..." he groaned. "I didn't mean it."

"Yes you did," she whispered. A tear slipped down her cheek. "Don't say you didn't mean it when you did."

"I don't want you out of my life!" he groaned in exasperation. "You're my daughter! If not by blood then at the very least I was the one who raised you."

Alice sniffled.

"Come on, Ally," he wheedled.

"What if, though..." she whispered hoarsely. "What if I'm not yours?"

He leaned over and patted the top of her head, like he used to when she was little and had a nightmare. "We'll figure something out. Maybe you can still visit me every third holiday or something. And of course your education is sorted until grad school."

She leaned into his touch and sighed. "Well, why couldn't you have said that in the first place?" she chided. He chuckled.

"I have a lot of making up to do, don't I?"

"You can start by ordering pizza," she handed him the phone. "While I ponder how much I've forgiven you."

"For your full forgiveness, I'd buy you the entirety of Italy."

She looked at him seriously. "You might have to."

"Well, pizza seems like a good start."

" _ _After a good_ dinner one can forgive anybody, even one's own relatives_ ," she quipped.

"You've been brushing up on your Oscar Wilde," he grinned appreciatively.

She shrugged. "Did _you_ know he was Irish?"

* * *

Jess was having trouble with his writing. He had thought that the short story was the perfect medium for him: short, concise, to the point. But he found himself having to structure everything tirelessly, having to think every word through to the point where the words stopped making sense anymore. He had moved his work from his house to the store, hoping the change of scenery would prove inspirational.

Screwing his face in concentration, he considered whether or not he need remove some of the adjectives in one paragraph. On one hand, descriptive inserts set the scene, defined the area for the reader. On the other hand, it was cumbersome and potentially detracted from the focus of the story. Which famous writer was it that accused another writer of never meeting an adjective he didn't like?

The sound of footsteps distracted him and he looked up. Upon recognizing the figure in front of him he smirked in a knowing way, and leaned back into his seat.

"I can't say I haven't expected you to show up."

The figure nodded. "Hello, Jess."

"Hello, Logan."


	6. Five: A Sight For Sore Eyes

_The sound of footsteps distracted him and he looked up. Upon recognising the figure in front of him he smirked in a knowing way, and leaned back into his seat._

" _I can't say I haven't expected you to show up."_

_The figure nodded. "Hello, Jess."_

" _Hello, Logan."_

The two men stared each other down for several minutes.

Imagine, if you care to, an old western film from the early days of Hollywood. Two lone figures, a long deserted street, a ball of tumble weed blowing through. One mouth lazily chewing a toothpick. Two pairs of eyes narrowing. A twitch of fingers, reaching for a gun strapped to a belted holster.

Multiply that tension tenfold, and you get a sense of the atmosphere in this small alcove. An animal could probably have smelled the testosterone thickening in the air.

Eventually, Jess sighed and kicked the chair across from him out. A high-pitched squeak escaped as the chair skidded across the hardwood and stopped short at Logan's hand. Slowly, carefully, he sat down. Their eyes met again. Simultaneously, they both sighed.

"Look, I'm not here for a fight," Logan admitted finally. "We're all adults here."

"She didn't cheat on you, you know. At least not with me," Jess shrugged.

Logan smiled bitterly. "I know. She's a terrible liar. I'm actually here about Alice."

Jess nodded. "Right." He rubbed his face with his hand.

"Until we have to test results back, we won't know who..." he trailed off awkwardly. "Well, you know what I mean. I need to know that, whatever the result, I can still have access to her."

Jess nodded. "I'm not gonna keep her away from you, man."

"I want to stay with me for some holidays. If you're her father, you get her Thanksgiving, Rory gets her Christmas, and I'll take a week in the summer. Something like that. I don't want to lose my daughter altogether."

"Deal," Jess agreed. "On one condition. If I'm not her father, I want some access anyway."

"That's a big ask for a step-cousin. I mean, I raised her, you've only known her a few weeks."

"Take it or leave it," Jess said calmly.

Logan pursed his lips, evidently deep in contemplation.

"Ok, fine. Deal." He extended his hand and Jess took it. "Do we need to draw up a contract?"

The corner of Jess's mouth twitched. "How 'bout we just take it as it goes for now? Gentlemen's honour."

"Always the cool guy," Logan shook his head. "Fine. I'm hoping you're an honourable guy." He stood up and began putting on his gloves.

"Me too," Jess replied.

Logan turned on his heel and headed for the exit. He stopped suddenly, however. Without out turning around, he addressed Jess again. "Just between us, whose do you think she is?"

Jess smirked, even though he knew Logan wasn't looking at him. "Rory's."

"Smartass," Logan muttered under his breath, and exited.

Jess turned back to his papers. He picked up his red pen, and put it down again. Suddenly, he was feeling much more generous. The line could stay.

* * *

_"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked._

_Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."_

_How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice._

_You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."_

 

* * *

 

"All right, we all set?"

"Yup."

"Okay. Ring the doorbell."

"What? Why me?"

"You're nearer."

"I don't want to ring the doorbell!"

"Why not?"

"I'm scared."

"That's silly."

"Is it? You ring then."

"Hey, is that a full moon?"

"No, it's only a crescent moon. For someone who went to an Ivy League School you really are stupid sometimes. I really- hey! Don't try and distract me. You're the adult here."

"Exactly. I'm the adult, which means I'm in charge. Which means you have to do as I say. Ha!"

"You can't play the Mom card like that!"

"Here look, it's simple, just press the button. It's sparkly!"

"All the more reason I shouldn't go near it."

Before the two women had time to press the doorbell, however, it swung open.

There was no pretending that the two women wanted to enter this house and endure this evening. They had already made several excuses, developed every possible short-term, highly contagious illness, been prevented by traffic and minor car accidents, babysat every child in Stars Hollow, and attended every possible festival. They ran out of excuses pretty soon however, under the tenacious persistence of one woman. This woman threw open the front door and raised her hands in the air.

"Wahay! My girls are here!" she shouted.

Alice stared in horror.

Rory hung her head in defeat.

She looked up and forced a feeble smile. "Hey, Liz."

Liz ushered them in. To Alice, Liz's house was familiar in the way that most houses in Stars Hollow were. She had spent time in probably every house in the town at some point in her youth, and Liz's love of crafts and TJ's wackiness had delighted her greatly once. She, Doula and Audrey had spent hours at Liz's kitchen table, armed with glue guns, glitter and macaroni. This was back in the days, of course, when all girls between the ages of four and eight could be temporarily united by glitter. Small mementos of those days were present in the house still. Most were Doula's, but Alice knew there was a macaroni birthday card of hers that was kept constantly on the mantelpiece and a horrendous Christmas tree decoration that was dragged out every year.

It wasn't that Liz and TJ weren't kind, or that they were boring. Alice was not looking forward to the evening simply because they were so _intense_ , and she suspected her mother's feelings were the same. Liz was always attacking them with questions and compliments, and getting overexcited and distracted and destroying dinner. Either they would have to order takeout tonight, or be forced to eat burnt roast chicken again. TJ meant well, but he drove Rory crazy with his crazy schemes and conspiracy theories, and when Rory got irritated, she always managed to pass it on to Alice. Doula, while a sweet girl as a child, had been hit hard over the head by puberty, and was moody and self-absorbed the vast majority of the time. Alice knew in advance that Doula would spend most of the time at the dinner table sulking and picking at her nails. Liz and TJ laughed it off, saying that she was nothing compared to Jess in his teenage years. Her mother would shoot grateful looks at Alice, who, though sometimes inclined to sulk and grunt, was the best teenager in the world beside Doula.

She was infinitely comforted, therefore, when she walked into the kitchen to see Jess sitting at the dining table, listening to TJ talk about what appeared to be the Big Bang Theory and demonstratehis theories by smashing fruit together in his face. Jess had his best 'back-off' face on, but it didn't seem to be doing him any good. He looked so visibly grateful to see them that he burst out with a loud, "Thank God!" and made no attempt to disguise his relief.

Inevitably, they were sitting at the dinner table waiting for over an hour as Liz tried to figure out what went wrong with the oven, the grill and the microwave, respectively. This led to a lot of conversation, and a lot of bread. Doula refused to come to the table until there was food on it, and stayed in her room. Nobody could fault her really; she had to deal with this almost every night, after all. Jess had professed a desire to do the same, but had been refused by everyone at the table. In fact, when Liz heard him from the kitchen she went over to him and smacked him on the head with her oven mitt. He rubbed the back of his head, muttered, "Jeez!" and grew sulky and irritable. TJ started asking Rory if about some Pearl Harbour conspiracy he had heard and demanded to know why she wasn't investigating it, being a journalist and whatnot. While at first Rory patiently explained that writing a weekly column was not the same as being an investigative reporter with front page headlines and a hell of a lot of free time on her hands, she quickly became frustrated by his persistence. Sensing danger when it was in the air, Alice tried to distract TJ by asking about his job, a subject which he was happy to engage wholeheartedly with. After a while, she glanced at Rory and Jess, who seemed to have struck up a tentative conversation about books they were reading. It made her very excited to see them getting on for once, and she enjoyed the opportunity to watch them openly. She wanted to know what they were like in happier times, how they interacted as a couple. All she had seen up to now was anger and awkwardness, even in the photographs she had found.

She could barely hear their words, but she deduced they were debating Tolstoy versus Dostoevsky. If there was any hidden meaning to their words, she couldn't hear it. She watched their body language instead, observing how quickly the tension between them seemed to disappear as they conversed. At first they had both seemed unwilling to look the other in the eye. Jess stared at his hands and ran his hand through his hair over and over. Rory kept her hands in her lap, twisting them nervously and seemed to have picked a spot on the wall behind his head to focus her attention on. As time passed, however, they became more comfortable with each other. Their postures relaxed, their fingers shook a little less. Once their eyes met, tentatively.

Oh well, it was a start.

* * *

"Well, was it romantic?" Alice demanded as soon as the door shut behind them.

"Was what romantic?"Rory asked as she unlocked the car and got in.

"Your conversation, obviously! Don't treat me like a child."

"You are a child," Rory said distractedly, buckling her seat belt.

"Mom!"

"Hmm?"

" _Was it romantic?"_

Rory sighed. "Only if you consider a discussion about the influence of Sofia Tolstoy on _Anna Karenina_ as romantic."

"I normally wouldn't," Alice relented. "But with the two of you, you never know."

Her mother chose to ignore that.

"It was nice. It felt like we were back in high school, sitting on the old muddy river bridge and arguing about books again," she said finally.

Alice worked very hard to suppress a smirk in the darkness.

* * *

Will Danes was the spit of his father. He had the same gruff but unfailingly kind exterior, the same love of baseball (especially the merchandise) and the same ability to cook a great burger. Though, thankfully, he did not share his father's love of flannel. Will was the obvious heir to _Luke's Diner_ , and had worked there since he was a teenager. Now that he was in college, he worked the holidays when he was home. Luke sat behind the counter, barking orders at him and complaining about any changes made, regardless of how small or effective they were. Will was perhaps the only person in Stars Hollow unafraid of Luke's temper and certainly the only one willing to argue with him as vehemently as he did. Their holiday arguments were a standing Stars Hollow tradition, and Alice always knew Christmas was coming when she found them standing in the middle of the dinner, poking each other in the chests as the veins in their necks throbbed dangerously.

Today, however, everyone was being very civil with one another. Alice knew from experience that she had probably missed a real humdinger of a fight yesterday for such a tentative truce to be in operation today. She was really upset that she had missed it. The walls were spattered with something that looked like blueberries, and she surmised that the blueberry oatmeal debate that had been building steam for days now had finally come to a head. The disappointment she felt at having missed what was by all accounts the fight of the year must have been evident in her face, because Will gave her a free ice-cream sundae with extra hot fudge and a cherry.

She couldn't lie; it did help ease the pain.

She took her time eating the sundae, but she was still waiting for her mother to arrive when she finished. Finally she floated in, looking completely distracted. "Hey honey," she kissed Alice on the top of her head and ordered a coffee.

"What's up with you?" Alice asked as she swept her finger along the bottom of her sundae and licked the last bit of fudge from her finger.

"Oh, nothing," Her mother replied. "I was just reading the mail."

Alice felt her heart quicken. "Is it the paternity results? Are they here?"

"Oh, no! Sorry honey I never thought...No, it's nothing like that!" Alice exhaled deeply and slumped down into her seat.

"What came in the mail then?"

"Oh, nothing special."

Alice squinted her eyes at her. "What's wrong with your eyes?"

Rory groaned. "I did the blinky thing, didn't I?"

"It honestly looked looked like a mini, localized seizure."

"Damn." Rory looked up at her daughter from under her hair. Alice was still looking at her suspiciously, and it was clear that she would not be letting the subject drop anytime soon. She sighed. "I got a book."

"A book," Alice repeated flatly.

"Yes. As a gift."

"Ok. Why is that a big deal?"

"It's not," Rory rushed to reassure her.

"What book is it then?"

"Um, _The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy,_ " she squeaked.

Alice's lips twitched into a smirk. "Huh," she said, and then let the subject drop.

* * *

Alice may have let it go, but Lorelai Gilmore had no intention of doing so.

"You loooove him," she teased as she flapped after her eldest daughter in Hartford Mall. Rory tried really hard to ignore her, and thus far was succeeding.

"At least you finally know, this burning _is_ an eternal flame!"

"I like this scarf. Do you like this scarf?"

"Everything you do, do you do it for him?"

"It's a bit boring, though, don't you think?"

"Is he your first, your last, your everything?"

"I'm not sure about brown. It doesn't go with any of my hats."

"Or is it because it reminds you of Jess' eyes? His eyes are brown, right?"

"But, on the bright side, brown goes with everything except black, so I can't go too far wrong."

"Do black scarves make his brown eyes blue?"

"Blue, now that's a good colour for knitwear. I used to have a blue scarf. I wonder where it is. That's the problem with these things, you put them away at the end of Winter and never find them again."

"Is this the Winter of your discontent? It won't be for much longer because you're in _love_!"

"Mom!"

"What?" Lorelai's face was the picture of innocence.

"Please," Rory begged weakly. "Give me a break. I don't know how I feel anymore, and it's not an unfamiliar feeling, because I've spent most of the time I've known Jess unsure of how I feel about him!" She spun on her heel and started walking away quickly.

"Denying how you feel about him would be more accurate!" Lorelai called after her.

Rory turned back suddenly. "Yeah," she shouted back. "Well, you're losing your touch! Most of those puns didn't even make sense!"

Lorelai gasped and pressed her hand to her chest. "Unnecessarily mean!" she screamed at Rory's retreating back.

* * *

Rory spent the evening with a large glass of wine and a bubble bath. She read the _Diaries_. She thought about Jess. She thought about their relationship from the first moment they met until the last time she saw him. She remembered her denial in the beginning of their relationship. Her fear of everything that he represented: danger, charm, spontaneity, uncertainty, _electricity_. She remembered revisiting those feelings while she sat on the edge of the bath in Stars Hollow, white stick in hand. He was too unreliable, too spontaneous, too Jess.

She knew that she had made a mistake there. He had been living in the same city for five years now. He owned his house. He was a New York Times Bestseller several times over. And even though she had hidden his possible-daughter from him, he was still willing to talk to her. To send her a book. And with Jess, a book was never just a book. He was deep like that.

Slowly, thoughtfully, she got out of the bath, tied her dressing gown at the waist, and sat down at her writing desk. She found her best narrow lined paper and her favourite black pen that didn't rub on her hand when she wrote too fast, and started writing.

_Pro Number One..._

 

* * *

 

_"Soon, however, she began to reason with herself, and try to be feeling less. Eight years, almost eight years had passed, since all had been given up. How absurd to be resuming the agitation which such an interval had banished into distance and indistinctness! What might not eight years do? Events of every description, changes, alienations, removals,-all, all must be comprised in it; and oblivion of the past-how natural, how certain too! It included nearly a third part of her own life. Alas! with all her reasonings, she found, that to retentive feelings eight years may be little more than nothing."_


	7. Six: How's It Gonna End?

_"Bitter love, a violet with it's crown of thorns in a thicet of spiky passions, spear of sorrow, corolla of rage: how did you come to conquer my soul? what brought you?"_

It was almost five in the morning when Rory pulled up into Jess' driveway. Ten minutes later, and her knuckles were bruised by the time he opened the front door. Her hair was dripping wet at the ends. The weather was conveying itself in the most fittingly literary terms as possible. Damn pathetic fallacy. She was Lear, cast out on to the moors. No, she was Catherine or Heathcliff wandering around the moors. Although Jess' modest but nice house in a suburb of Hartford wasn't exactly moorish. But weather was making up for any discrepancies by raining as heavily as it possibly could. Her mascara was running down her cheeks and neck in rivulets. She was shivering wildly, her whole body convulsing. He opened the door an inch, eyes sleepy and befuddled. He took in her appearance, the hysteria which had so clearly taken possession of her, without comment. "This situation seems vaguely familiar," he commented, eventually. "You want a towel?"

She held out a sheet of paper with shaking hands, but he had already turned around and retreated into the house. She burst through the door behind him, and stopped in the hallway, paper limp in her hand by her side. She seemed as thrown as him, as bewildered by this situation and as unsure as to how exactly she had gotten there. Her eyes were wild and darting. It was possible that she was drunk; she couldn't quite remember how many glasses of wine she had consumed over the course of the night. He returned with a towel, which he offered to her. She ignored it and held out the sheet of paper one more time. They both stood opposite one another, one arm outstretched, staring at the other.

"I made a list." She shook the paper in her right hand "About you. And I thought you should know that you failed. The cons way outnumber the pros."

If she had been expecting his expression to reveal his feelings about that statement she was disappointed.

"Show me that." He tore the page from her fingers. It was ruined by the rain. The ink was running and the pages were limp. He unfolded it, and pursued it with clenched jaw and hard eyes.

Calmly, he refolded it and gave it back to her. "You want a drink?"

She paused, and then nodded sharply. He poured them both something harsh and bitter. It burned its way down her throat and mixed with the wine already in her system, making her feel nauseous. He sat down, and rubbed his mouth with his hand and averted his eyes from hers..

"When did you write that list?" he asked softly.

"About two hours ago."

"I was hoping you wouldn't say that," he sighed heavily.

She struggled for something to say.

"Jess, I-" Her voice sounded weak and pathetic to her own ears.

He didn't say anything for a long time.

"You don't know me at all," he said seriously. His tone was marked by its pure despondancy.

"That's not true and you know it."

He stood up and snatched the paper from her again. "Here," he said, hitting the paper with his left hand and suddenly growing angry. "'Cons five through eight: Jess is unreliable, undependable, unambitious, untrustworthy.' You can't possibly still believe that. I can't have spent my whole life trying to prove otherwise and have still gotten nowhere!"

She flushed a dark red under her mascara-blackened cheeks.

"I have my own company. I wrote ten books, three of which were _New York Times Bestsellers_. I own my house, I pay my taxes, I give money to goddamn charity. God, even Lorelai can see that but you can't. You, who always believed I could be more than I was won't accept it when I do it. Don't you think that's a bit fucking ironic, Rory? Especially from the girl with a criminal record who got pregnant out of wedlock!"

"Jess, I didn't mean..."

"I talked to Logan!" he shouted. "And I didn't hit him, or get in a fight with him. We sat down and conversed like adults. You kept a huge secret from me, a massive thing, and did I freak out on you? No! I accepted my responsibilities and I worked my ass off to try and forgive you. You, on the other hand, make up childish lists to make huge, potentially life-altering decisions based on the person I used to be!"

"I fell in love with the person you used to be!" she cried.

"But not for long," he countered. "The things that attracted you to me, the danger and spontaneity, no matter how made-up in your head they were, were the pros once, weren't they? And now they're your ways to convince yourself to keep away from me. What the fuck am I supposed to do about that?"

She wrapped her arms around herself and began to cry in earnest. "I don't know how I feel about you! I never have. What do you want me to do? Make a new list?"

"I want you to fuck the list!" He began tearing it up roughly. "I want you to make a decision based on how you feel for once in your life!"

"I did that once," she sobbed. "And you broke my heart."

A dense silence followed, in which she cried into her own chest and he struggled vainly for something to say. He raised a shaky hand to his face and took deep breaths to calm himself.

"But before that... it was good?" His voice was quiet, pleading. It reminded her of a child, or as much as Jess could remind anyone of a child.

"Yeah," she said softly. "It was good."

The atmosphere of the room had shifted from anger to something else, something calm and dense, as if all their history had congregated around them and now pressed against them, heavy and pulling. It seemed sacrilegious to speak at all. The room had become the temple of their relationship, and they were the patron saints.

Jess took a half-step towards her. "You can't break a heart twice."

"You don't know that."

"Sure I do. It's simple physics."

"But you can break it worse. Deepen the cracks, so to speak," she breathed. He was only inches away from her now. She could feel his breath whispering across her cheek.

"Never gonna hurt as badly as the first time."

"How do I know that for sure?" she murmured. Her breath hitched in her chest.

"You don't," he breathed.

He closed the gap, and kissed her very softly. She sighed into his mouth, and he kissed her again, still tenderly. He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her closer. She ran her hand over the fabric covering his shoulder and down his arm. His skin was soft and warm, and she parted her lips slightly to allow him to kiss her more deeply.

"Please," he murmured against her lips. "Let me prove it to you." She ran her hand up his neck, over his ear and into his hair.

"Okay," she breathed into his neck.

* * *

_Resignation brings a curious large courage-when there is nothing more to lose. The soul takes risks, and dares. Is it a curious short-cut sometimes to the heights?_ _\- Algernon Blackwood_

 

* * *

 

"Don't say what you're going to say," Jess ordered Luke, making himself comfortable on the couch. He opened the beer in front of him and took a sip. "Lorelai here?"

"No, she and Audrey are visiting Rory and Alice. And you didn't know what I was going to say."

"You were going to say something about me being an idiot for putting us all through this again."

"No, I wasn't," Luke insisted. "I'm always on your side when it comes to Rory, aren't I?"

Jess examined his hands very carefully. "Yes, you were always very keen to see us together. Couldn't go ten minutes without saying hi, if memory serves correct."

"Shut up," Luke said affectionately. "You were just kids. She was just a kid, anyway." He took a sip of his own beer. "Besides, I'd be a bit of a hypocrite if I told you not to go back to her, wouldn't I?"

"Yes," Jess agreed. "You would."

They watched the football in silence for several minutes. Neither were particularly interested in it, but the patterns of male bonding dictated that one must have a credible excuse to talk without expressly sitting down _to_ talk. Any pathetic excuse would do, and when the awkward silences struck they had the advantage of pretending to pay attention to the television. Of course, neither was particularly conscious that they were participating essentially in girl talk without nail polish. Because they had football. And beer. If they were women, they would have been drinking wine. Obviously. Had Lorelai had been in the house, she would have spent her time in the kitchen grunting in imitation of them and growling, "Me man, me like beer," to her own great amusement. Well, we all have our little traditions.

One beer later, Luke turned to his nephew again. "Be careful," he told him seriously.

Jess sighed crankily. "I'm not going to get the kid involved. Jeez."

"I'm not talking about her. I'm talking about _you_."

"Think I'm used to it by now," Jess responded, contrarily.

Luke laughed sarcastically and shook his head. "Yes, I'm sure you're such a glutton for punishment because you're immune to being hurt."

"Shut up," Jess bit back.

Luke continued to chuckle for several minutes. On screen, a player on the opposing team scored a touchdown. Both men groaned appropriately. Luke looked at Jess.

"You know I'm proud of you. How you've handled everything with Alice and how you've turned out."

"Christ," Jess muttered. "Could you be any sappier?" He stood up to leave the room. "I need another beer."

They didn't speak again for the rest of the night, simply sat in silence watching the game, and the post-game analysis, and the build-up for the next week's match. They both appreciated their time spent together, however, and over the years they had endeavoured to do it as much as possible. The atmosphere was not even ruined by Will's entrance and excited response to the football. By the time the womenfolk arrived home, Jess was preparing to leave. He was glad not to have to create conversation with the girls, because their secretive smiles told him they had been talking to Rory about him. He detected, with some doubt, that they were pretty supportive of the idea.

It didn't matter how long it had been going on, the idea that Lorelai Gilmore approved of him still seemed inherently wrong to Jess. It made every rebellious hair on his body stand up to attention. When he thought about it, he wanted to act out in the strangest ways, to go back to being Stars Hollow's resident rebel-in-chief. On his way out to the car, he spent several moments staring very seriously at old Babette's newest gnome, Topsy, with his mind working furiously. Eventually, however, his conscience caught up with him. Poor Babette was too frail in her advanced age to suffer any more bereavement. He briefly considered breaking into Kirk's Market and messing with the stock again, but ultimately decided against it. The walk to Luke's Diner sobered him up again, but he decided to play it safe and stay in the apartment upstairs.

He went to bed extremely despondent about the model citizen he had become.

* * *

Alice was sitting in the living room, in the big, comfy armchair they had designated the best place to read, perusing _Atonement_ when a noise distracted her. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that it was her mother, shoes in hand, obviously attempting to slip past her. She slammed the book shut loudly, so that Rory jumped in fright. She put a hand to her heart with a pained expression on her face. "Hey, honey," she said with a voice that was a little to high-pitched. "I was just, uh,..."

"Sneaking back into the house?" Alice finished for her.

"Why would I need to do that?" Rory squeaked, her eyes darting around the place wildly.

"Because you went out for snacks-" she consulted her watch. "Four hours ago, and you don't have any bags or food or anything."

"Uh, well, see...funny thing is, the store was closed for...fire!"

"Oh?"

"Yeah, a fire. Kirk was going crazy, and I had to help calm everybody down."

"And let me guess, miraculously there was no-one hurt or smoke damage or anything?"

"Well, it was localized in the...store room!"

"And if I call Kirk right now, he'll confirm this?" Alice picked up the phone in her hands and shook it in Rory's face.

Rory nodded her head energetically. "Sure."

Alice put the phone down on the table again. "You're commitment to your ridiculous fabrication is almost admirable." She brushed past her mother and started up the stairs. As she climbed, she called back, "Hope you had a nice date! Next time, just go instead of making things up."

She heard her mother's sigh of relief from the landing.

* * *

"Do you like it?"

She opened up the box and stared at the giant pearls nestled inside. "Wow."

"Is that a yes?"

"Yes!" she enthused.

He picked up the necklace and fastened it around her neck. "It's a family heirloom."

She touched it lightly. "Which in the Huntzberger family means it came over on the Mayflower or something, right?"

Logan laughed. "Not quite, but close. My mother was very keen that you get them before she died. They're passed down the female line, usually, at the age of eighteen, but Honour agreed you should have them, and I think in the circumstances, you should have them now."

"Dad, this is very sweet, but it can't act as insurance. I'm not going to forget about your side of the family even if we find out we're not blood-related."

"I know," he agreed. "It just feels like we've been growing more and more distant ever since the divorce. And I know," he held up his hands. "That's largely my fault. But I want you to know, things are going to change from now on."

"It's not all your fault," she admitted, and sighed deeply. "I hate what you did to Mom. She didn't deserve that. We had to start our lives from scratch, and I hated you for that, and I hated that fact that I missed you." She started to sniffle. He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her tightly.

"I'm so sorry," he mumbled into her hair.

She sobbed harder. "Me too."

He pulled away from her. "Things are going to be different from now on, sweetheart. I swear."

_With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame.- George Eliot_

 

* * *

 

Lorelai thought the idea of Rory and Jess: Take Forty-Two was an absolute riot. She laughed without pause for a whole ten minutes, when Rory told her about their late-night reunion, to the point that she complained of her stomach muscles hurting afterwards. Clearly she was the only one in the world who got a kick out of it, but that was Lorelai Gilmore for you anyway. She quickly pronounced poor Alice as the kid with the most screwed up family in the entire world. She tried to draw a family tree to calculate their family, present and future, with her two dads. "If you and Jess have kids, and he's Alice's step-cousin-in-law, then her sister will also be her step-cousin-once-removed? No, wait, is it step? And she disintegrated into another fit of giggles.

"Jess and I are not having kids!" Rory exclaimed, hotly. "We're taking everything very slowly."

"Oh, yeah, that's what the pair of you are famous for!" Lorelai grinned wickedly.

Audrey decided to referee. "Has he bought you any jewellery or flowers or presents? That would suggest you're not moving _that_ slowly."

Rory shook her head in relief.

Lorelai turned to her youngest daughter. "I'm sorry, young grasshopper, but I have much to teach you yet. Jess is not a flower-giver. The question is, has he lent you any books yet?" The two looked at the woman opposite them expectantly. Said woman's skin was rapidly turning a nice shade of scarlet.

"Amazing," Audrey commented. "Even your forehead is red."

"Shut up," Rory mumbled. "It's just a book. He found it in a little bookshop in New York, and I'm the only person he knows who likes Ayn Rand, and he knows I like first editions..." she trailed off, knowing she had said too much.

"So he lent you a first edition?" Lorelai prodded.

To the table, Rory mumbled that he had lent it with the understanding that she was to keep it.

"He gave you a first edition?" Lorelai screeched.

Audrey looked at her mother. "This is good?"

"This is practically a proposal!" She crowed.

Rory hid her face in her hands in mortification as her mother and sister pranced around the room singing "Reunited" by Peaches and Herb and generally getting themselves so excited that Rory's emphatic assertions that she was not getting married, and they weren't even properly together again, and it's just a book _for the love of God_ could not discourage them.


	8. Seven: Alice

**Chapter Seven: Alice**

_But maybe he's the father,_ _  
_ _of that lost little girl_ _  
_ _It's hard to tell in this light_

_And I want to know the same thing_ _  
_ _Everyone wants to know_ _  
_ _How's it going to end?_

_-Tom Waits, "How's It Gonna End?"_

 

* * *

 

_"But it's no use now," thought poor Alice, "to pretend to be two people! Why, there's hardly enough of me left to make one respectable person!"- Alice Through The Looking-Glass_

 

* * *

 

As the wait for the results began, Alice felt that time was going excruciatingly slow. But, she soon found that time was going far too quickly for her comfort.

All of a sudden, there is a letter in her mailbox, and it is going to tell her who her biological father is. The letter comes on Christmas Eve. It is the last day of post, and Alice cannot help but feel bitter. If they had just sent it a day later, she would not have received it before Christmas. She is certain her holidays are now ruined.

For a moment, she simply stands by the mailbox, with the crisp white envelope in her hand, letting the enormity of the occasion wash over her. Her gloved fingers are shaking, partly because of the letter, and partly from the chill. For once, everything is silent. She is acutely aware of the soft sounds of light breezes brushing against the branches across the street and fluttering the hair on her forehead. There are no birds, no sounds from inside the house, no shoes crunching against the snow. There is only Alice and her trembling fingers. She briefly considers throwing the letter away. Burying it under the compacted snow, or thrusting it into the slush that has accumulated where the lawn meets the road. Then nobody would get hurt. The blocky print on the front of the letter addresses her as Alice Gilmore. She closes her eyes and wishes it were that simple. Before she opens her eyes, however, her fingers freeze and she drops the letter. It lands safely in the snow and tumbles a few inches toward the house. She takes it as a sign.

Her mother arrives, laden with armfuls of presents, impeccably wrapped and yet festively decorated to Lorelai's standards. She stumbles down the porch, blind from the bundle obscuring her vision. Her impractical boots skid a little on the icy path and she lets out a small, amused screech.

"Alice," she calls, her voice thick with laughter. "Come help your old, burdened mother!"

Alice picks up the letter but does not reply to her. Rory stops, pulls a smaller present out of the way, and scrutinizes her daughter. "You okay, sweets? You're pale."

Alice cannot think of the words to use, so she resorts to sweeping one hand towards the other hand with the white paper clasped in its fist. Rory's eyes widen, and her mouth opens wide. "Is that…?" she begins breathlessly. Alice nods.

Her mother panics, bursting into action. She runs to the car and dumps the presents in the back seat. "Okay. Okay. This is earlier than they said it would come, but it's okay. Right? Yeah, it is. We just need a plan of action. No time to make a list. Though it's not like there's a choice to be made. We just gotta…open it."

Alice clenches the letter in her hand until it wrinkles. Rory calms down long enough to look at her daughter properly, and her face softens. "Do you want to open it now, or wait?"

"Wait," Alice says firmly.

"Okay, then," Rory gestures with her hand, "Get in the car. We're going to be late."

* * *

The drive to Stars Hollow takes far, far longer than Alice has ever experienced. The hazardous weather conditions obstruct their passage and slow them almost to a halt. Her mother squints at the frost on the roads and the freshly falling snow softly sweeping onto the wind-shield, concentrating as hard as she can on keeping the car on the road. Alice takes deep breaths _in and out and in and out and in and out. One and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and._

Stars Hollow is beautiful in the snow, as always. The town square looks like something out of a fairytale, and as ever, Alice and Rory are swept away by the magical fantasy world in which they lose themselves, indulgently and briefly. It doesn't look to be the type of town where children don't know who their fathers are.

The Crap Shack is lit bright and inside shadows bustle about. Alice can make out Jess's outline sitting on the couch, book in hand. She wonders if he has read his letter yet. She knows she will have to do this soon, regardless. Her mother seems to have formulated a plan in the course of their travels. She leads Alice around the back of the house and into the kitchen, which is mercifully empty save for Luke, cooking over the stove with a towel thrown casually over his shoulder.

"You're late," he greets them distractedly. "As ever."

Rory raises her fingers to her lips and motions to Alice. Confused and bemused, Luke cocks an eyebrow at her. She sighs. "We got the paternity test results, and we need a quiet place to open them. Can you find us somewhere?" she entreats him.

Unfortunately, the announcement for dinner has just been made and half the family troupes in as she is talking. Suddenly the room is abuzz with gasps and squeals. Rory shoots a frantic glance at her daughter who feels her resolve weaken. She turns to her mother. "Let's just get this over with," she announces, grits her teeth and strides into the living room. Everyone follows.

On the way, Rory grasps Jess' hand. "Did you open your letter?" she urgently whispers into his ear. He shakes his head and tells her he hasn't been home in two days.

In the living room, Alice stands near the window, letter in hand. The whole family troupes over to her and halts expectantly. She stands, staring at the envelope with an inscrutable expression on her face.

"Take your time, hun," Lorelai reassures from somewhere by the stairs. Alice looks up, at her mother and Jess, at the people clustered around her and steadily encroaching on the sacred circle between her and everybody else. She seems to make a decision, and her hands move.

Swiftly, she tears the envelope in two.

"You know," she announces, ignoring the open mouths and comically suspended outstretched hands facing her. "I don't think I want to know. Everything's good now. This way nobody gets hurt. I mean, that's the point of family isn't it? Being together and loving each other even if you don't know if you are blood-related." She beams, satisfied with herself.

"Well," Luke hedges. "If you're sure?"

"I am," she responds, resolutely.

The crowd dissipates gradually. Audrey and Will amble off to the kitchen, complaining about wasting time and food going cold. April follows them, shrugging and giving Alice a kind smile. Doula and Gary accompany their father outside to get their gifts from the car. Liz runs to the bathroom. Left in the room is Alice, Rory, Jess, Luke and Lorelai. They all look at each other for a long moment, and then glance about themselves, unsure of how to proceed.

"Well, that got rid of them!" Alice grins.

Lorelai lets out a small, triumphant cry. "I knew you didn't mean it! Ha! It's only in two pieces; we can still make it out no problem."

"Of course she didn't," Rory replies. "She just had to get rid of the audience." She looks encouragingly at her daughter. "Go ahead, sweets."

Alice glances up at them one more time and clumsily pulls out the two sheets of paper from their paper cases. She places them up together, making sure they are exact. A collective breath is sucked in and held. Alice examines the pages carefully and for a long time. "Well?" Rory demands eventually.

"I'm not sure," Alice replies hesitantly. "There's a lot of legal mumbo-jumbo." She turns the page. "Hmm," she mutters.

"What?" Everybody bursts out.

Alice scrunches her face in confusion. "They aren't one hundred percent sure. There's a 72.99 percent chance Jess is my dad, and a 24.99 percent chance Logan is."

"Paris said that would happen," Rory says softly. "because we did two separate tests, remember? Testing you with Logan, and then a separate test with you and Jess. It means that whoever has the highest percentage has the most genetic markers in common with you. So I guess Jess is your father." She glances sideways at him. "I'll call Paris now," she pulls out her cell, "and get that confirmed."

A quick call to Paris confirms that those test results would confirm Jess as Alice's father in a court of law nine times out of ten. Any discrepancies in Logan's results could have been due to the fact that Rory's DNA wasn't used.

Alice supposes that something is supposed to happen now, everybody hugging or celebrating, or hell, even talking, but all that does happen is an uncomfortable silence that is disrupted by Doula, Gary and TJ returning from the car. Awkwardly, Alice gestures to the door in a desperate attempt to escape the ensuing explanations. Everyone nods and lets her go, with sympathetic smiles. Nobody knows where to look.

* * *

She lies across the bench of the gazebo for at least an hour. It is bitterly cold but she doesn't think she can face returning to the house just yet. There are pretty lights strung all over the beams holding up the roof, and if she lies flat on the wooden slats she can see the stars. She stares at them for so long that they begin to blur. She realises when she feels wet on her cheeks, that her vision is actually being obscured by tears.

Logan has called her cell phone five times, but she cannot bear to answer.

She shouldn't be surprised when Jess appears in the square, but she is. She sits up with a start when he tosses her coat at her and proceeds to sit beside her. She is mortified by the fact that she is still crying, and cannot seem to stop. She brushes her fingers over her eyelashes and cheeks and apologises profusely.

"Don't be," he says quietly.

They sit quietly for a few minutes, and then she bursts into tears again. "S-sorry," she apologises again. "I feel like such a jerk."

"It's understandable," he reassures her. "I wouldn't be too stoked to have me as a father either."

"That's not it at all," she tries to explain. "I'm just feeling overwhelmed. You'd think I'd have had enough time to prepare myself for these results, but apparently not."

"Don't think this is something you can prepare yourself for," he snorts. "But seriously, I get it. You already have a dad, and this is all totally weird."

"Yeah," she sighs. "Totally weird. That about covers it."

"Look, I told you before, nothing has to change."

"But it does," she cries, her voice dramatically rising in volume and pitch. "Dad will never visit and as soon as Mom works up the courage to tell me that you and her are together I'll be in a whole different family and everything will change!"

"Jeez, calm down!" He waves his hands around a bit. "Rory and I aren't getting married or anything. If we manage one day at a time we'll be doing well." He sighs loudly and rubs his jaw. "We'll just go slow, okay? Play it cool."

"Cool," she repeats slowly, testing the word on her tongue. "I can do that. Frank at the Sands."

He shakes his head in amusement. "Christ, you really are my daughter."

She puts her coat on and rubs her hands together briskly to warm them. Jess leans back on his elbows to stare up at the stars. Alice is reminded forcedly of their night on the porch steps, and how she had frenetically searched his face for similarities with her own. She sees them all again now, the features she had made excuses for or attributed to Lorelai and recessive genes. The thick, wavy black hair, the brown eyes, the posture.

"How long," she muses quietly, "do you think it took April to start calling Luke 'dad'?"

"Probably whenever it felt comfortable, or he felt like her dad." Jess' tone is soft. "I never called my father by anything but 'Jimmy' up until the day he died," he says seriously. She realizes that this is his way of telling her that he can be 'Jess' to her forever, and he will understand. She glances at her dark surroundings and studies her watch. Jess seems to know what she is thinking, and assures her that nobody is going to bombard her with questions when she walks through the door of the Gilmore-Danes house.

She stops him at the threshold of the house. "I got an A on my interview."

He tuts. "Doing well in school. I might have to ground you."

She tries really hard not to, but she smiles a little.

* * *

Inside of the house, her mother sits her down and tells her that she has spoken with Logan. Alice is too exhausted to imagine facing another emotionally draining conversation. In fact, she simply wants to go to bed, curl up, and shut her brain down entirely. Unfortunately, it is never that easy, and she must endure another long phone conversation with her father.

Logan is understandably subdued, but surprisingly gentle and calm. She knows that he is distracted and hurt, but she had expected him to be angrier, and colder. In truth, she is a little hurt by how calm he seems, when she feels so torn. She feels that he has given up on her already. Accidentally, she says it out loud. Logan breathes heavily down the line for several seconds while she feels her heartbeats spiral out of control.

"I'm trying to be grateful in defeat," he says finally.

She groans in frustration. "This childish competition you have with Jess is incredibly offensive to me, you know!" she exclaims.

"You say that now," Logan argues, "but soon you'll be swooning over his sarcasm, and artistic integrity, and crazy hair, just like your mother. She always looked at him like the sun shined out of his-"

"Dad!" she cries, and stifles a giggle.

He laughs a little with her and sobers up.

"Come to Paris," he entreats her suddenly.

"Uh, what?" she asks dumbly.

"This summer. Come to Paris with me. Just the two of us."

She bites her lip and glances out the window. "I'm sure some reporter will have broken the story by then."

"Screw them," he responds brightly. "I never wanted this life anyway. I guess I forgot that somewhere along the way."

"And work?"

"I promise I won't even bring my laptop."

She grins. "Okay, then."

She returns to the living room from her mother's old room and smiles at the collection of people congregated there. Her mother is sitting with a sleepy Jess, head on his shoulder and fingers entwined with his. Doula and Audrey are having a high-pitched disagreement over nail polish, which April is tiredly trying to referee. Gary, Will and TJ have found a football somewhere, and are tossing it around the room, getting in the way of everybody else who is trying to watch Casablanca. As Alice enters the room, Lorelai stands and tries to shut everyone up, because Humphrey Bogart has just seen Ingrid Bergman, by catching the ball. This inevitably ends up causing mass chaos, including a possible concussion and a shattered lamp.

Alice slips in through the madness to her mother's side. Rory greets her with a smile, and pulls her down beside her. "How's Logan?" She questions, voice thick with sleep and contentment.

"Bien," Alice sighs.

Her mother smiles knowingly. "So you're going to Paris, then?"

Alice nods and smiles. She nestles her head into her mother's shoulder and sighs contentedly.

"What colour nail polish?"

"Watermelon."

"This is gonna be good." She settled herself and grinned. "Pass the popcorn, Jess."

 

* * *

 

 

_"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked._

_Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."_

_How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice._

_You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."_

— _Lewis Carroll (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass)_


End file.
